THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

Biology 

BEQUEST  OF 

Iheodore  S.  Palmer 


Y>X 

s 


JU, 


VICTOR    KUTCHIN 


WHAT  BIRDS  HAVE  DONE 
WITH  ME 


BY 

VICTOR  ^KUTCHIN,  M.D. 

A  BIRD-LOVER 


BOSTON 
RICHARD  G.  BADGER 

THE   GORHAM   PRESS 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,  BY  RICHARD  G.  BADGER 
All  Rights  Reserved 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 
The  Gorham  Press,  Boston,  U.  S.  A. 


m 

K 
3 


TO 
GENE  STRATTON-PORTER 

A  true  Nature-lover,  whose  interest  in  birds  is  not 

in  anatomical  specimens,  but  in  creatures  very 

much   alive,   wonderful   for  beauty,   song 

and  wings,  that  have  spiritual  uplift  in 

them  for  human  beings ;  this  little 

volume    about    live    birds    is 

gratefully     dedicated. 


582 


CONTENTS 


I  VIRGIN  SOIL     ........  9 

II  MR.     TURVEYDROP     AND     HlS     FOREIGN 

COUSINS    ........  21 

III  MOTHERLESS  BABIES  .     .     .     .     .     .  31 

IV  THE  KEEPER  OF  THE  SPRING-HOUSE     .  42 
V  WINGS,  WINGS,  WINGS  .     .     .    ,'.     *  52 

VI  PIRATES       .     .     .     .     .     .     Y     ,     .  63 

VII  AN  OLD  LOG  THAT  WAS  BEWITCHED  .  72 

VIII  NOTHING  So  SILLY  AS  A  GOOSE    .     .  '    .  83 

IX  A  DISH  OF  RO.BINS     ......  94 

X  MR.  CHICKADEE   .     .     •     .     ...     .  105 

XI  THE  SONG  AND  THE  SINGER  .     .     .     .  119 

XII  THE  LOVE  ELEMENT  IN  BIRD  PROTEC- 

TION    .     .....!     .     .     .     '..'    .  132 

XIII  MR.    ESAU       .     .     ,     .     ...     .  150 

XIV  STUPIDITY  STREET  .....   •  .    *.  160 
XV  JAYS  AND  CROWS  ....     .     .     .  1  75 

XVI  BIRDS'  COURTSHIP  AND  MARRIAGE  .     .  193 

XVII  LAST  YEAR'S  BIRD'S  NEST     .     .     .     .207 

XVIII  A  SAINT  BARTHOLOMEW  OF  BIRDS    .     .  221 

XIX  SOME  INVISIBLE  DEFENDERS  .      .     .    V  237 

XX  GETTING  ACQUAINTED     .     .     .     .     .  246 

XXI  THE  UNKNOWN  PATHWAY  ....  261 


WHAT  BIRDS  HAVE  DONE 
WITH  ME 


What  Birds  Have  Done 
With  Me 


CHAPTER  I 

VIRGIN  SOIL 

Alice  Gary,  in  her  order  for  a  picture,  started 
out  by  asking  a  painter,  "Has  your  hand  the  cun- 
ning to  draw  shapes  of  things  that  you  never 
saw?"  On  the  face  of  it,  that  request  is  scarcely 
less  appalling  than  the  demand  in  olden  times  for 
the  interpretation  of  a  forgotten  dream.  Later 
on,  we  find  that  she  hoped  to  make  the  artist  see 
the  desired  picture  with  her  eyes,  not  his  own. 
Using  words  for  pigments,  she  is  very  successful 
in  reproducing  her  memory  picture,  but  what  the 
painter  saw  was  unfortunately  never  put  upon 
canvas  to  constitute  an  object  lesson  of  what  a 
blur  and  daub  a  picture  must  be  where  the  artist 
is  attempting  to  paint  something  that  he  never 
actually  saw  himself. 

The  libraries  and  art  galleries  of  the  world  are 
9 


10       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

lumbered  up  with  spoiled  reams  of  paper  and 
ruined  squares  of  canvas  upon  which  blind  men 
have  attempted  to  make  those  who  have  eyes  see 
what  they  never  saw  themselves,  Shakespeare, 
strangely  enough,  in  his  closing  of  "The  Tem- 
pest," assured  the  audience  that  the  actors  are 
spirits,  the  play,  a  baseless  fabric,  the  whole  set- 
ting of  the  stage,  an  unsubstantial  pageant  that 
would  leave  not  a  rack  behind. 

The  old  preface  was  a  kind  of  declaration  of 
superior  wisdom  on  the  part  of  the  author  who 
found  it  expedient  to  call  his  audience  to  look 
over  his  shoulder  while  he  explained  the  profun- 
dities of  his  creation.  Nevertheless,  explana- 
tions often  require  further  explanations,  and  so 
on,  like  a  nest  of  Chinese  boxes  that  turn  out, 
finally,  to  have  nothing  in  the  last  box.  On  the 
other  hand,  real  things  may  be  safely  trusted  in 
the  hands  of  real  people,  and  the  rest  do  not 
count. 

To  one  who  sees  everything  as  in  a  picture, 
whose  mind  is  actually  photographic,  memory  cor- 
responds to  a  film  that  may  be  developed  into  per- 
manent pictures,  or  rejected  and  thrown  away  like 
seed  that  will  not  grow.  With  films  developed 
into  permanent  pictures,  I  shall  utterly  fail  unless 
I  have  the  cunning  to  put  them  together  and  make 
them  something  like  moving  pictures;  make  you, 
in  fact,  see  a  real  forest  with  trees  that  sway  in 


Virgin  Soil  n 

the  wind,  whose  'boles  are  being  attacked  by  ac- 
tual wood-choppers,  who  make  the  chips  fly  and 
the  giants  tremble  convulsively  and  go  crashing  to 
earth  with  the  boom  of  cannons.  This,  after  in- 
numerable repetitions,  is  followed  by  the  smoking 
hell  of  flames  that  out-rivals  the  light  of  the  sun, 
and  literally  burns  a  great  hole  in  the  night.  This 
precedes  the  coming  of  the  mighty  breaking  plow 
to  turn  up  the  virgin  soil.  It  is  drawn  by  four 
yoke  of  oxen,  following  after  each  other — a  great 
centipede  walking  with  many  legs.  Alas,  like  the 
virgin  soil  turned  up  by  the  first  furrow,  the  mind 
also  must  be  virgin  soil  in  order  to  have  such  a 
picture  stamped  indelibly  upon  it.  Only  the  mind 
of  a  boy,  waxed  to  receive  and  steeled  to  retain, 
would  be  likely  to  catch  out-line  and  minutiae, 
light  and  shadow,  central  figures  and  back-ground, 
newness  and  age,  and,  robing  all  in  the  royal 
purple  of  a  first  experience,  hang  it  in  a  temple 
not  made  with  hands;  a  memory  picture  of  such 
immortal  youth  that,  in  comparison,  the  baby 
faces  of  the  Sistine  fresco  would  seem  dim  and 
old. 

"Here  they  come,  Here  they  come!"  shouts 
the  small  boy,  "Better  get  out  of  the  way  if  you 
don't  want  to  get  run  over;"  That  is  not  a  pistol, 
that's  the  cracking  of  a  whip!  "Get  up,  Buck, 
Get  up,  Brin;  Get  up,  Mose;  Get  up,  Pete;  Get 
up,  Tom;  Get  up,  Jerry;  Get  up,  Bob;  Get  up, 


12       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

Harry ;"  almost  sings  the  driver.  Then  the  plow 
man  shouts  to  him,  "Why  the  devil  don't  you  keep 
those  leaders  in  line  ?  Do  you  think  I'm  marking 
out  a  circus  ring?"  Straight  to  the  flag;  "There, 
that's  better!"  and  away  they  go.  The  small 
boy  is  in  pursuit  and  will  never  forget  that  first 
furrow.  The  soft,  cool  earth  at  its  bottom  seemed 
to  have  a  kiss  and  caress  for  his  bare  feet  at  every 
step.  Round  and  round  they  go,  the  share  of  the 
great  plow,  sharp  as  a  knife,  cutting  off  roots 
bigger  than  his  leg,  just  like  they  were  cheese. 
But  sometimes  they  are  too  big,  and  the  driver 
goes  frantic,  and  running  along  the  line  of  strain- 
ing oxen,  whipping,  shouting,  and  swearing,  he 
finds  it  no  use,  they  have  to  leave  that  particular 
root.  Sometimes  the  chain  will  get  caught  on  a 
stump  and  the  big  plow  will  fairly  jump  out  of 
the  ground,  the  plowman  dropping  the  handles 
and  dodging  just  like  he  was  afraid  of  it. 

The  small  boy  whoops  and  shouts  himself 
hoarse,  feeling  that  he  is  taking  part  in  the  grand- 
est game  ever  played  on  earth.  They  plowed 
six  furrows  around  the  great  field  by  noon,  and 
then  turned  the  cattle  out  to  graze  with  the  yokes 
on,  so  they  would  not  stray  too  far.  Then  they 
take  off  the  share  of  the  plow  that  they  call  the 
lay,  and  proceed  to  sharpen  it  by  putting  it  in  a 
furious  fire  until  it  is  red  hot;  then,  holding  it 
with  pinchers  on  a  big  piece  of  iron,  called  an  anvil, 


Fir  gin  Soil  13 

they  pound  it,  and  hammer  it  till  it  makes  your 
ears  ring.  From  where  they  stand,  the  small  boy 
can  see  all  over  the  field,  and  for  the  first  time  he 
notices  that  the  furrows  look  like  the  paper  bor- 
der on  his  own  room  at  home.  The  yellow  border 
around  the  green  field  looks  quite  pretty,  and  he 
wonders  if  the  birds  would  enjoy  it  if  they  never 
did  any  more  plowing,  but  just  left  it  as  it  was. 
He  does  not  believe  the  black-birds  that  swarmed 
around  him  as  they  followed  the  plow,  gobbling 
up  every  living  thing  would,  because  they  were  too 
greedy  to  notice  anything  but  something  to  eat. 
He  had  been  too  busy  before  to  give  more  than  a 
passing  thought  to  the  countless  forms  of  life 
brought  to  light  by  the  plow.  He  had  not  sup- 
posed that  so  many  things  lived  under  ground. 
Why  did  they  do  it?  He  would  ask  his  father 
about  it,  and  he  must  not  forget  to  ask  him  why 
each  new  furrow  lapped  over  on  the  edge  of  the 
last  one  as  if  it  had  to  be  held  down. 

After  dinner,  he  propounded  these  questions 
and  was  told  that  the  earth  was  the  real  home 
of  every  thing;  that  all  that  lived  had  come  forth 
from  it  and  would  ultimately  return  and  slumber 
in  its  bosom.  That  with  regard  to  the  furrows, 
they  would  doubtless  remain  where  they  were  if 
not  held  down,  because  so  far  they  had  not  run 
away,  and  they  probably  had  been  turned  over 
again  and  again;  perhaps  by  a  plow  ten  times  as 


14       What  Birds  .Have  Done  With  Me 

big  as  old  man  Hill's,  drawn  by  elephants,  or 
a  little  plow  made  out  of  a  single  piece  of  wood 
drawn  by  a  buffalo  or  a  donkey,  and  driven  by  a 
man  practically  naked.  The  small  boy  looked  a 
bit  puzzled,  but  said,  uYes,  thank  you,  sir,"  and 
started  to  run  to  catch  up  with  old  man  Hill,  the 
plow  man,  and  Pete,  the  oxen  driver.  The  lat- 
ter now  had  a  new  cracker  on  his  whip.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  urchin  had  not  understood  a 
word  that  his  father  had  said  to  him,  but  he  was 
conscious  of  a  vague,  troubled  feeling,  and  when 
the  plow  started  again,  he  began  to  scrutinize  the 
living  things  turned  up,  to  see  if  among  them  all, 
there  were  any  who  would  make  good  play-fel- 
lows if  he  had  to  come  and  live  in  the  ground  with 
them. 

If  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  fascination  of  re- 
pulsion, it  would  go  far  to  explain  the  small  boy's 
increasing  interest  in  the  creatures  from  the  under- 
world, sent  scurrying  for  safety  in  all  directions, 
or  left  helpless  in  the  bottom  of  the  furrow  by 
what  may  have  seemed  to  them  something  a  bit 
like  what  an  earthquake  is  to  us.  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson  emphasizes  the  fact,  that  "we  see  what 
we  look  for,"  and  each  thing  that  he  had  noticed 
in  the  fore-noon  was  multiplied  by  ten  in  the 
afternoon.  Ants,  worms,  grubs,  beetles,  swarmed 
— and  one  had  a  thousand  legs,  as  sure  as  you  are 
alive.  He  found  only  two  things  that  under  any 


Virgin  Soil  1J 

possible  circumstances  could  have  been  nice  neigh- 
bors,— a  big  white  thing  that  dirt  could  not  make 
dirty,  appealed  to  him  on  account  of  its  utter 
helplessness, — and  a  beetle  colored  like  the  rain- 
bow, from  which  it  must  have  fallen. 

The  king  of  the  purple  grackles  had  clearly  sent 
out  into  the  high-ways  and  hedges,  and  bidden 
all  his  kith  and  kin  and  subjects  of  every  kind,  to 
a  great  supper  that  was  waiting,  and  was  little 
short  of  royal  in  its  abundance.  They  were  all 
there,  and  simply  took  possession  of  the  earth 
and  the  fullness  thereof, — dignified,  and  almost 
stately,  but  not  too  much  so  to  make  the  most  of 
their  opportunities.  It  is  in  the  nature  of  feasts 
to  make  outside  folks  especially  conscious  of  hun- 
ger, and  so  the  robin  and  the  blue-jay  came  for 
their  share ;  and  after  them,  slipping  from  cover 
into  the  furrow,  and  gone  like  a  sunbeam,  was  a 
shy  brown  bird  that  played  the  part  of  Ruth 
among  the  corn. 

It  was  a  thoroughly  tired  urchin  that  dragged 
leaden  feet  upstairs  to  bed  that  night,  and  found 
the  dream-land  ship  with  sails  unfurled  awaiting 
him.  It  "geed"  and  "hawed"  a  time  or  two  and 
he  never  knew  when  it  passed  the  harbor  bar  and 
glided  away  into  the  great  ocean  of  forgetful- 
ness. 

The  dawn  wind  had  scarcely  commenced  to  toy 
with  the  freshness  of  the  June  morning,  a  fresh- 


1 6       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

ness  augmented  by  great  drops  of  dew  that  at 
sun-rise  would,  for  a  moment,  reflect  the  sun  and 
die  in  a  blaze  of  glory.  Before  dawn,  the  small 
boy  was  up  and  dressing  on  his  way  down  stairs 
to  be  on  hand  to  help  Pete  Jackson  retrieve  the 
oxen  from  the  fastnesses  of  the  great  swamp,  that 
lay  to  the  northwest.  It  was  quite  certain  that 
they  would  go  in  that  direction  for  water,  and  the 
lush  grass  abounding  there  would  meet  the  re- 
quirements of  hunger,  and  weariness  would  cir- 
cumscribe their  straying  to  narrow  bounds.  With 
a  rain  of  dew  shaken  by  the  wind  from  every  bush 
and  tree,  and  rank  marsh  grass  dripping  with 
water,  our  sturdy  urchin  was  soon  wet  to  the 
skin, — literally  didn't  have  a  dry  thread  on  him. 
But  he  counted  this  all  joy,  and  waded  shallow 
pools,  floundered  through  deep  mire,  and  would 
have  whooped  and  shouted  with  delight,  had  he 
not  been  afraid  of  frightening  his  friends,  the 
birds.  In  countless  numbers,  to  the  right  and  left 
of  them,  in  front  and  behind  them,  strange  calls 
and  rival  songs  kept  him  alert  to  the  teeming  life 
of  the  wilderness.  Anxious  to  see  and  hear  them 
all,  he  was  very,  very  far  from  realizing  that  it 
would  take  a  life-time  to  come  to  know  the  life 
history  of  a  few  of  them,  well. 

Bringing  the  cattle  out  of  the  swamp  on  the 
edge  of  the  highlands,  his  real  education  in  bird 
lore  commenced  in  earnest.  An  unusually  stupid 


Fir  gin  Soil  17 

brute  of  an  ox  that  Pete  was  clubbing  along,  in- 
stead of  going  around  a  brush  pile  on  the  edge  of 
an  old  logging  road,  blundered  through  it,  send- 
ing a  mother  quail  and  her  callow  brood  into  the 
road  at  their  feet.  The  mother  gave  one  note  of 
warning  and  the  baby  quail  neither  ran  nor  flew, 
but  simply  vanished  before  their  very  eyes.  The 
small  boy  was  sure  that  the  ox  had  stepped  on  the 
mother,  as  she  was  turning  somersaults  rather 
than  running,  so  he  started  after  her  like  a  flash, 
and  in  a  minute  had  her  in  his  hands.  Pete,  con- 
vulsed with  laughter,  came  to  meet  him  and  ex- 
amining the  bird  found  she  had  lost  the  first  joint 
of  every  toe, — they  probably  having  been  frozen 
off.  What  had  tickled  him  so  much  was  to  see 
the  fool  thing  trying  to  get  them  to  chase  her, 
when  she  was  so  "gol-fired"  lame  that  their  slow- 
est ox  could  out-run  her.  He  then,  in  reply  to  the 
small  boy's  question,  "Why  did  she  want  us  to 
chase  her?"  explained  the  world-old  maneuver  of 
certain  mother  birds  to  attract  human  creatures 
away  from  their  nests,  and  furthermore  puzzled 
the  small  boy  by  the  statement  that  a  quail,  if 
she  wanted  to,  could  order  her  chicks  to  turn  into 
dead  leaves, — and  they  did  it,  too.  While  the 
explanations  had  taken  place,  the  lad,  holding 
the  mother  bird  in  both  hands,  had  been  cudgel- 
ling his  brain  for  a  name  for  her.  When  it  came, 
it  came  like  a  flash, — "Good  Mrs.  Stumpy"; — 


1 8       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

and  he  whispered  it  softly  to  himself  as  he  almost 
reverentially  put  her  on  the  ground,  and  saw  her 
vanish  into  the  under-growth. 

Next  morning  when  they  went  after  the  cat- 
tle, and  for  many  succeeding  mornings,  little  hands 
scattered  wheat  along  the  logging  road,  for  a 
wild  bird  that  had  both  a  local  habitation  and  a 
name. 

Before  the  end  of  the  week,  in  which  the  Lord 
sent  him  the  quail,  and  he  tasted  of  the  tree  of 
knowledge  at  almost  the  same  instant, — isn't  that 
a  fine  mixture? — he  did  something  that  goes  to 
prove  that  a  little  knowledge  may  be  a  very  dan- 
gerous thing.  The  breakers  were  now  on  the  last 
five  acres.  His  interest  had  not  flagged  and  he 
was  still  in  pursuit  of  the  plow  and  the  oxen.  The 
grackles  had  come  to  regard  him  as  part  of  the 
out-fit,  and  Pete  and  old  Hill  proved  themselves 
to  be  fine  play-fellows.  When  a  thing  happened 
that  came  very  near  sending  a  foolish  little  boy 
to  dwell  with  those  things  that  live  under  ground, 
where  his  father  had  told  him  everything  would 
finally  return.  That  he  escaped  being  trampled  to 
death  in  the  virgin  soil  in  which  he  had  so  de- 
lighted, by  the  very  oxen  he  had  driven  and  petted, 
both  Pete  and  old  Hill  agreed  was  nothing  short 
of  a  God's  miracle.  Swinging  around  on  the 
northeast  corner  where  there  was  a  little  sand 
knoll,  right  under  the  feet  of  "Bob"  and  "Harry," 


Virgin  Soil  19 

who  were  half  broken,  flighty  steers,  a  gray  bird, 
a  whip-poor-will,  started,  more  gracefully  to  be 
sure,  to  enact  the  role  of  "Good  Mrs.  Stumpy." 
One  glance  at  her,  and  keeping  his  eyes  on  the  spot 
where  she  started  her  gyrations,  the  small  boy 
dashed  under  the  feet  of  the  cattle,  to  save  the 
nestlings  that  were  surely  going  to  be  trampled  to 
death.  Doubtless  only  catching  a  glimpse  of  him, 
and  possibly  regarding  him,  when  on  all-fours,  as 
some  new  kind  of  wild  animal,  the  steers  began  to 
kick  and  plunge  in  the  utmost  terror,  and  crowd- 
ing the  leaders  out  of  the  furrow,  the  two  head 
yokes  swung  around  toward  the  plow,  and  what 
had  been  a  quiet,  orderly  breaking  team  became  an 
excited  and  unmanageable  bunch  of  wild  cattle; 
"beginning  to  mill"  with  a  small  boy  out  of  sight 
and  in  the  center  of  them.  According  to  their 
stories,  both  Pete  and  old  Hill  were  the  rescuers, 
but  whoever  did  it,  pulled  out  between  trampling 
feet,  a  very  dirty  and  tousled  youngster,  holding 
a  bird  in  each  hand,  and  wonder  of  wonders,  with 
the  exception  of  some  slight  bruises,  not  hurt  at 
all.  He  had  given  fear  no  place  in  his  mind, 
entirely  taken  up  with  the  thought  of  rescuing 
the  helpless,  and  after  all  the  scolding  and  the 
final  order  to  keep  away  from  the  breaking,  not 
then  nor  ever  afterward,  could  he  feel,  or  would 
he  admit,  the  slightest  regret  for  what  he  had 
done. 


10       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

Only  once  did  he  disobey  his  father's  order  to 
keep  away  from  the  breaking.  At  an  early  hour 
the  next  morning,  he  hurried  out  to  the  field  to  see 
for  himself  if  the  mother  bird  had  found  the 
young  at  the  foot  of  a  near-by  stump  where  he 
placed  them.  Joy  of  joys,  there  she  was,  brood- 
ing them  just  as  though  nothing  had  happened. 
For  several  days,  the  lad  went  about  as  if  he  had 
something  on  his  mind,  and  one  evening  after 
bidding  his  mother  good-night,  he  returned,  and 
lifting  a  puzzled  face  to  hers,  asked,  "Mamma, 
does  a  fellow  have  to  be  a  mother  before  he  can 
understand  how  Mrs.  Stumpy  and  Mrs.  Whip- 
poor-will  feel,  when  they  ask  folks  to  come  and 
kill  'em  if  they  will  just  leave  their  babies  alone?" 
She  had  at  first  smiled,  but  only  for  an  instant, 
then  she  gathered  him  into  her  arms  with  un- 
wonted tenderness,  and  said  tremulously,  "I  guess 
not,  my  boy,  my  little  boy!" 


CHAPTER  II 

MR.  TURVEYDROP  AND  HIS  FOREIGN  COUSINS 

That  beauty  is  in  the  eye  of  the  beholder,  is 
a  half  truth,  and  is  a  part  of  a  universal  law  that 
makes  a  mental  condition,  the  measure  of  external 
influences  upon  us.  Every  artist  knows  that  fifty 
per  cent  of  the  effect  of  a  picture  is  in  what  may 
be  termed  background.  A  painting  of  Liberty 
enlightening  the  world,  whose  background  is  a 
city  market,  must  of  necessity  be  a  failure  for  the 
subject  demands,  as  background,  the  ocean  and 
the  sky. 

Now,  it  is  equally  true  that  we  will  fail  to 
understand  the  influence  of  a  flock  of  birds  upon 
the  mind  of  the  boy,  unless  we  retrace  his  steps 
far  enough  to  acquaint  ourselves  with  the  cir- 
cumstances in  which  the  secret  of  his  mental  con- 
dition lay  hidden,  when  he  first  beheld  them.  Be- 
tween the  age  of  four  and  five,  he  lived  for  one 
year  in  the  country,  then  three  years  in  the  city, 
hating  it  all  and  longing  to  get  back  home — back 
to  nature. 

Then  the  return.     No  angel  with  a  flaming 

21 


22       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

sword  at  the  gate,  and  the  gate  wide  open  for 
any  one  to  enter  in  and  take  possession.  For  four 
weeks  he  believed  himself  in  the  Garden  of  Eden, 
and  as  a  mother  hen  will  try  to  stretch  her  wings 
to  cover  every  thing  in  sight,  so  the  wings  of 
his  love  yearned  to  gather  every  living  thing  be- 
neath them.  Joy,  joy,  joy  beneath  the  tender  light 
of  a  new  heaven,  and  on  the  warm  palpitating 
breast  of  a  new  earth, — and  then  came  death  and 
all  his  woes.  Is  the  object  of  life,  to  teach  by  ex- 
perience ?  Perhaps,  for  certain  it  is  that  we  never 
half  know  a  thing  till  we  have  thus  learned  it. 
Many  a  funeral  he  had  seen  in  the  city,  and  once, 
visiting  a  boy  who  lived  near  a  cemetery,  they, 
with  a  few  neighboring  boys,  had  spent  half  a  day 
playing  I  Spy  and  hiding  behind  tombstones, 
but  death  never  really  came  home  to  him  till  he 
looked  upon  the  stark  and  stiff  bodies  of  some 
little  pigs  that  had  actually  died  in  his  own  Eden. 
Between  the  house  and  the  barn,  early  one  morn- 
ing, he  had  met  his  father,  who  paused  long 
enough  to  say,  "Black  Sue  has  eight  babies.  Have 
you  seen  them?" 

He  might  have  said  more,  but  the  boy  did  not 
give  him  a  chance.  He  was  off  for  the  sty,  like  a 
race  horse,  and  in  a  moment  came  staggering  back, 
dumb  with  horror.  He  had  almost  run  over  them, 
for  they  lay  outside  the  sty  all  in  a  row — no  cuter 
or  more  innocent  babies  under  heaven,  and  all 


Mr.  Turveydrop  and  His  Foreign  Cousins     23 

quite  dead.  "No  siree,"  he  wouldn't  cry.  They 
would  think  him  a  fool  if  he  cried  over  dead  pigs, 
and  never  understand  that  it  wasn't  over  the  pigs, 
but  was  because  he  had  just  learned  that  it  was 
possible  for  things  to  die  in  Eden.  He  and  Sid 
took  them  over  to  the  sand  hill  and  buried  them 
in  eight  separate  graves;  but  toward  night,  when 
the  boy  thought  about  it,  it  seemed  cruel  to  have 
separated  them  in  death,  so  he  got  Sid,  and  they 
went  back  and  dug  a  single  grave — it  was  easy 
digging — and,  lining  it  well  with  dead  leaves,  they 
snuggled  them  up  together  and  covered  them  well 
with  leaves,  then  the  dirt;  which  was  all  a  fellow 
could  do. 

Three  days  after  this,  he  returned  with  his 
mother  from  a  visit  to  the  hated  city,  to  find  that 
his  yearling  heifer,  Rosie,  Cherry's  calf,  was  dead, 
and  his  brother  and  the  hired  man  had  just  skinned 
her,  and  were  about  to  bury  her  on  the  sand  hill 
where  he  and  Sid  had  buried  the  little  pigs.  He 
ran  to  the  barn — he  had  scarcely  believed  it  could 
be  true,  but  perhaps  it  was — but  when  he  got 
there,  he  could  not  recognize  the  ghastly  thing 
that  lay  there,  with  a  chain  around  its  neck,  whose 
glassy  eyes  had  in  them  no  look  of  recognition. 
He  followed  the  team  that  dragged  the  body  be- 
side the  hole  in  the  ground,  into  which  they  rolled 
it,  in  a  hurry,  jumping  on  the  feet  to  bend  them 
down  so  they  would  not  stick  out  of  the  dirt  when 


24       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

the  hole  was  filled  up;  all  the  time  laughing  and 
talking  about  a  dance  that  had  taken  place  the 
night  before.  He  declined  to  ride  one  of  the 
horses,  so  they  each  mounted  one  and  rode  away, 
and  left  him.  If  he  could  have  cried  it  would  have 
been  a  lot  better.  He  had  had  to  battle  with  him- 
self not  to  cry  over  the  little  pigs,  but  this  loss 
left  him  dry-eyed  and  staring.  There  really  had 
been  a  witchery  about  Rosie,  in  life,  that  possibly 
went  a  very  little  way  to  strengthen  the  old  classic 
myth  that  Dido  was  actually  turned  into  such  a 
Heifer.  Over  all  his  domestic  pets,  she  had 
reigned  supreme.  He  did  not  refuse  his  dinner, 
but  refused  to  wash  his  hands  and  face.  'Way 
back  in  his  subconsciousness  was  a  vague  feeling 
that  for  him  to  be  too  clean,  when  she  was  smoth- 
ered with  dirt,  would  be  a  kind  of  disloyalty. 
Then,  for  a  few  days,  loyalty  to  her  made  him 
welcome  every  dirty  job  about  the  place,  and  sin- 
cere grief  had  the  effect  of  transforming  a  natu- 
rally cleanly  little  fellow,  into  a  very  dirty  and 
unkempt  one.  In  a  nut-shell,  here  is  what  he  had 
in  his  mind;  he  had  learned  in  Sunday  school  that 
man  was  made  out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth — it 
must  have  been  mud  or  it  would  not  have  stuck 
together — in  death,  we  go  back  into  the  dirt; 
what's  the  use  to  keep  clean? 

This  represents  his  condition  of  both  mind  and 
body,  on  that  May  morning  when  he  saw  his  first 


Mr.  Turveydrop  and  His  Foreign  Cousins     25 

flock  of  cedar  Waxwings,  among  the  blossoms  of 
the  wild  crab  apple  trees,  along  the  drive.  They 
were  a  revelation  of  beauty  and  a  rebuke  to  the 
unwashed  and  unkempt  of  the  human  family.  In 
a  wide  sense,  they  were  of  the  earth,  but  not  of 
the  dirt.  He  could  not  describe,  he  could  only 
feel.  Later  on,  he  might  have  said,  "Architecture 
has  been  called  'frozen  poetry/  and  my  first 
glimpse  of  them  made  me  dimly  understand  that 
I  was  looking  upon  incarnate  poetry — They  were 
the  living,  breathing  spirit  of  harmony  that  is 
back  of  all  musical  expression."  That  they  were 
feeding  upon  blossoms  gave  him  a  feeling  that 
they  were  scarcely  of  the  earth,  surely  not  earthy 
of  the  earth.  Other  birds  were  covered  with 
feathers;  these  were  robed,  uniformed,  appareled 
by  a  master  hand.  Compared  to  them,  many 
other  birds  were  frumps,  and  even  a  gorgeous 
red  and  green  parrot,  little  more  than  an  Irish 
woman  out  for  a  holiday.  So  far  as  clothes  went 
with  them,  every  day  was  Sunday,  for  they  wore 
their  best  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  in  the 
year,  and  like  the  smile  of  Optimism,  they  were  as 
near  perpetual  as  anything  can  be  in  a  world  of 
change.  Being  convinced  that  they  were  going  to 
remain,  he  did  not,  but  made  a  sneak  for  the 
kitchen  and  scrubbed  his  hands  and  face,  combed 
his  hair,  brushed  his  clothes,  got  a  straw  hat  that 
did  not  have  a  hole  in  the  crown,  and  having  done 


26       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

his  best  to  make  himself  fit  for  polite  society,  he 
went  back. 

Years  afterward,  on  a  drowsy  Sabbath  day,  he 
found  himself  listening  to  a  frowsy  little  parson 
droning  over  a  sermon  from  the  text,  "Keep  your- 
selves unspotted  from  the  world,"  and  sweeping 
the  window  from  the  central  blue  of  illimitable 
space,  came  the  same  old  crab  apple  tree,  where 
he  had  seen  them  first,  and  the  identical  flock  of 
Waxwings,  and  he  smiled  to  himself  as  he  thought, 
"Any  one  of  you  smug  fellows  could  give  this  poor 
little  human,  spades  and  trumps,  and  beat  him  in 
a  sermon  on  this  text,  for  at  least  you  would  look 
the  part."  One  of  the  first  reader  lessons  in  life 
they  were  created  to  teach,  they  had  thus  neatly 
delivered  to  the  boy,  and  he  had  made  a  personal 
application  thereof,  with  soap  and  brush,  and 
was  now  back  for  a  second  reader  lesson.  He  did 
not  have  long  to  wait.  The  second  reader  class, 
and  he  was  it,  was  ordered  to  take  up  the  study 
of  certain  wax  figures,  representing  deportment. 

That  a  certain  thing  has  been  done  in  a  certain 
way,  time  out  of  mind,  is  no  reason  that  it  should 
be  continued;  neither  is  there  any  sense  in  not 
trying  a  thing,  simply  because  it  never  has  been 
done.  In  the  antiquated,  rutty  schools,  in  which 
humanity  in  its  youth  is  guarded  from  learning 
any  thing  about  the  wonder  world  in  which  it  has 
its  being,  it  is  customary  for  one  individual  to 


Mr.  Turveydrop  and  His  Foreign  Cousins     27 

teach  a  class,  but  with  the  Wax-wings,  to  whom 
owls  might  go  to  school  to  their  considerable 
profit,  this  is  all  reversed,  and  the  class  teaches 
the  individual.  Lady  Clara,  we  have  guessed  your 
secret;  we  know  where  you  got  that  repose  that 
stamps  the  cast  of  Vere  de  Vere.  To  the  Four 
Hundred  of  New  York,  we  send  this  challenge :  in 
a  contest  on  Deportment,  we  will  wager  a  hundred 
to  one,  and  enter  four  Wax-wings  against  your  en- 
tire bunch,  and  if  you  are  not  beaten,  in  addition 
to  the  loss  of  our  wager,  we  will  throw  Turvey- 
drop et  al.  into  bankruptcy.  We  are  not  afraid  of 
being  beaten,  for  with  the  Wax-wings,  deportment 
is  a  fashion  and  a  passion ;  and  if  you  must  know 
it,  a  trust  that  can  never  be  dissolved,  by  any 
court  lower  than  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  Uni- 
verse. Long  years  afterward,  when  the  boy  had 
grown  to  manhood,  and  had  married  and  had  a 
boy  of  his  own,  during  an  Easter  vacation,  he 
took  him  down  to  Mill's  swamp  in  a  search  for 
early  spring  Migrants,  and  the  first  birds  tb  be 
encountered  were  a  flock  of  twenty-one  Wax- 
wings,  who  are  winter  residents  with  us.  They 
were,  as  always,  on  dress  parade,  and  quite  as 
bright  and  shining  as  the  sun.  Don't  think  me 
sacrilegious  if  I  say  that  it  was  Communion  Sab- 
bath with  them,  for  I  don't  mean  it  in  either  a 
religious  or  an  irreligious  way  when  I  call  atten- 
tion to  one  of  the  most  curious  customs  in  the 


28       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

bird  kingdom.  The  bird  at  the  head  of  the  line 
will  pass  a  worm  to  his  next  neighbor,  and  he  to 
his  neighbor,  till  it  has  made  the  rounds  of  every 
bird  in  the  flock,  and  has  been  returned  to  the  one 
whose  find  it  was,  who  proceeds  to  partake  of  it 
in  a  slow  and  sedate  and  decorous  fashion,  calcu- 
lated to  delight  the  heart  of  Dr.  Fletcher.  On 
higher  ground,  not  twenty  feet  from  the  gaunt 
elm  on  which  they  were  perched,  the  man  and  boy 
were  having  something  like  an  interview  with  the 
birds,  and  the  man  was  curious  as  to  the  effect  of 
it  on  the  mind  of  the  boy.  He  did  not  have  long 
to  wait;  in  the  flippant  style  of  the  average  col- 
lege youth  came  the  comment.  uDad,  don't  you 
think  these  birds  awfully  stuck  on  themselves  ?" 
"Perhaps,"  came  the  rejoinder,  "but  in  an  age 
when  misrule  is  the  rule,  rather  than  the  excep- 
tion, and  Flippancy  with  his  cap  and  bells  marches 
through  the  land,  past  the  seats  of  the  mighty 
and  up  to  the  very  throne  of  God,  it's  high  time 
for* us  to  learn  a  needful  lesson  of  a  bird  that 
can  always  be  trusted  to  do  things  decently  and 
in  order."  There  was  a  merry  twinkle  in  the 
young  fellow's  eyes  as  he  put  his  arm  almost 
caressingly  on  his  father's  shoulder,  and  said,  "I 
wanted  to  get  a  rise  out  of  you,  and  that  was  the 
reason  I  threw  the  bait." 

The  Bohemian  Wax-wing,  a  first  cousin  to  the 
Cedar  Wax-wing,  is  a  cosmopolitan  fellow,  and  his 


Mr.  Turveydrop  and  His  Foreign  Cousins     2$ 

visits  are  few  and  far  between,  but  unlike  angels' 
visits,  they  were  formerly  thought  to  presage  war, 
pestilence,  and  famine — though,  of  course,  it  goes 
without  the  saying  that  in  reality  they  had  no 
more  connection  with  the  coming  of  such  public 
calamities  than  the  striking  of  your  grandfath- 
er's clock.  Mysterious  and  unusual  things  in  the 
minds  of  people  who  haven't  a  thimble  full  of 
sense,  always  spell  evil  or  devil.  In  later  times, 
the  Bohemian  Wax-wing  has  been  called  the 
Seven-year  Bird,  but  his  ways  are  too  erratic  to 
be  held  down  to  human  observation. 

Not  so  long  ago  one  of  these  birds  of  mystery 
gave  up  his  life  at  the  hands  of  a  tender  hearted 
old  man,  whose  eyes  grow  dimmer,  day  by  day; 
and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  was  an  accident, 
the  ghost  of  the  dead  bird  is  likely  to  follow  him 
to  the  very  end  of  life's  journey.  Every  body 
knows  what  a  pest  the  English  sparrow  is,  and 
it  had  grown  quite  unbearable  to  the  man.  It 
could  not  be  kept  out  of  his  Martins'  house,  it 
ate  the  food  he  provided  for  his  winter  birds,  and 
fairly  swarmed  about  an  old  cedar  hedge  not 
four  rods  from  his  office  window.  One  day,  quite 
forgetting  all  the  lessons  on  deportment  taught 
him  by  the  Cedar  Wax-wing,  he  lost  his  temper, 
and  taking  a  gun,  that  he  had  not  fired  for  years, 
he  stepped  to  the  door  and  fired  into  the  hedge 
alive  with  English  sparrows.  Only  one  bird  fell, 


30       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

and  when  he  picked  it  up, — Oh,  cruel  spite! — it 
was  a  Bohemian  Wax-wing:  he,  the  last  of  all  men 
on  earth  had  reduced  this  rare  and  beautiful  thing 
to  supper  for  a  cat,  or  a  bit  of  carrion,  the  day 
after.  That  was  unbearable,  and  without  the  least 
knowledge  of  what  final  disposition  he  was  to 
make  of  it,  he  sent  the  body  to  a  neighboring  town 
to  a  taxidermist  to  be  mounted.  What  a  queer  no- 
tion it  is,  that  to  some  extent  is  in  us  all,  that 
penance  of  one  kind  or  another  will  help  us  to 
right  a  wrong,  or  correct  a  mistake.  Acting  as 
an  attorney  for  all  birds,  he  gave  an  earnest  ap- 
peal to  a  large  audience  of  school  children  to 
spare  the  birds,  and  not  till  on  his  way  to  the 
station  and  in  front  of  the  shop  of  the  taxidermist, 
did  he  remember  that  it  was  here  where  he  had 
sent  the  Wax-wing  to  be  stuffed.  He  only  had 
a  moment,  and  acting  on  impulse  he  ran  in,  paid 
for  the  work,  took  out  his  card  across  which  was 
printed  in  heavy  type,  "A  friend  of  the  Birds," 
and  above  his  name  wrote,  "Killed  by  the  donor 
January  13,  1913,"  and  ordered  it  sent  up  to  the 
School  Collection  of  stuffed  birds.  Even  after 
he  had  thought  it  over,  he  said  to  himself,  "Yes, 
I  richly  deserve  to  have  Mr.  Turvey-drop's  for- 
eign cousin  announce  to  all  those  children  that  I 
am  a  hypocrite,"  but  after  sleeping  on  it,  he  whis- 
pered to  himself,  on  waking,  uBeing  a  Bohemian 
Wax-wing,  perhaps  he  will  make  the  announce- 
ment in  French  or  German,  and  not  in  English." 


CHAPTER  III 

MOTHERLESS    BABIES 

Adolph  Buzze  was  a  Canadian  wood-chopper, 
the  only  one  left  of  a  gang  of  his  country-men 
who  had  helped  denude  the  township,  where  the 
small  boy  lived,  of  the  primeval  forest;  all  the 
rest  had  drifted  north  and  westward  on  the  skir- 
mish line  of  advancing  settlement.  To  the  small 
boy,  Adolph  became  a  guide,  philosopher,  and 
friend,  and  to  him,  he  owed  all  his  boyish  knowl- 
edge of  wood-craft.  Born  in  the  woods,  always 
living  in  the  woods,  with  eyes  of  wonder  for  every 
thing  passing  about  him,  his  knowledge  of  wood- 
folks  and  wood-land  ways  was  remarkable;  now 
add  to  this,  wonderful  gaity,  cheerfulness  and 
perpetual  laughter,  and  you  have  a  personality 
calculated  to  take  captive  the  heart  of  a  child. 
His  limited  knowledge  of  English,  added  to, 
rather  than  detracted  from,  the  charm  of  his  con- 
versation. Here  are  a  few  examples.  Pointing 
to  the  criss-crossing  of  all  manner  of  wild  animal 
tracks  in  the  snow,  he  would  say  at  the  end  of  a 
ripple  and  laughter: 

31 


32        What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

"Now,  watch  ze  me  read  primer  book  in  right 
tune,"  and  he  would  unravel  the  tangle.  Again, 
pointing  to  where  a  fox  had  made  a  long  leap; 
"He  say  Adolph  go  buy  more  long  leg."  A  duck's 
track  would  call  forth  this,  or  something  like  it; 
"When  I  try  fly,  fool  like  duck  walk." 

What  he  did  not  know  about  every  living  thing 
in  the  wilderness,  the  small  boy  did  not  think 
worth  knowing.  He  was  always  eager  to  initiate 
his  pupil  into  new  mysteries,- — even  to  the  eat- 
ing of  a  rye-bread  sandwich,  with  frozen  ants 
between  the  slices, — followed  with  shouts  of 
laughter  that  woke  the  echoes,  when  he  got  a 
glimpse  of  the  small  boy's  face,  after  swallowing 
the  first  mouthful.  How  can  I  convey  any  ade- 
quate idea  of  the  perpetual  delight  of  Adolph's 
cabin,  dug  into  a  sharp  southern  slope,  with  only 
two  logs  and  the  slope  of  its  roof  to  mock  at  the 
north  wind  that  went  howling  by  in  impotent 
rage?  Lying  on  a  bear  skin,  of  a  winter  night, 
before  the  pulsating  red  glory  of  blazing  logs, 
listening  to  Adolph's  fiddle  that  told  its  own  story 
of  life  in  the  woods,  from  the  earliest  chirp  of 
half-awakened  birds  to  the  raucous  screech  of  a 
catamount;  music  so  wonderful  that  it  fairly  sent 
a  thrill  of  swaying  motion  up  among  the  skins  of 
animals  hanging  near  the  rooftree  of  the  unceiled 
room.  To  this,  add  marvelous  jig  dancing,  French 
songs  without  number,  and  stories  without  end, 


Motherless  Babies  33 

about  the  old  smooth  bore  rifle  with  which  his 
grandfather  had  killed  a  whole  tribe  of  Indians, 
single-handed,  up  in  Canada, — not  to  mention  a 
thousand  elk,  a  thousand  bear,  a  thousand  caribou 
and  buffalo,  lynx,  and  wolves,  more  numerous 
than  the  stars  in  the  sky.  Swans,  geese,  ducks, 
partridges,  pigeons,  squirrels,  and  rabbits,  he  him- 
self had  gathered  in,  in  numbers  beyond  the  drops 
of  water  in  the  ocean.  Wonder  of  wonders,  it 
was  with  this  almost  sacred  gun  that  Adolph 
taught  him  to  shoot.  The  instruction  was  very 
excellent,  "Hold  ze  gun  down,  bring  ze  gun  up, 
shoot  ze  quick.1'  The  world  nearly  went  topsy- 
turvy when  one  day,  meeting  the  little  French- 
man with  a  load  of  wood,  beneath  which  his  old 
wagon  had  gone  to  pieces  like  the  " wonderful 
shay,"  he  said  to  him, 

"Ze  tell  father,  I  trade  ze  rifle  for  ze  green 
wagon.  I  even  trade  quick." 

He  never  knew  what  he  said  in  reply,  but  study- 
ing a  Sunday  school  lesson  that  night,  that  hap- 
pened to  be  about  Jacob  and  Esau,  he  had  a  clear 
vision  of  what  Adolph  had  offered  to  do;  trade 
his  birthright  for  a  mess  of  pottage.  When 
Adolph  had  made  the  proposition,  he  had  thought 
him  mad,  and  had  not  even  mentioned  it  to  his 
father,  and  he  could  scarcely  believe  his  ears  at 
dawn  the  next  day,  when  he  heard  Adolph's  voice 
in  the  yard,  talking  trade  with  his  father. 


34       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

He  heard  him  say,  "Ze  boy  shoot  ze  gun  good; 
good  gun  make  ze  good  man.  No  draw  chip  with 
ze  gun,  trade,  draw  ze  chip  with  ze  wagon." 

The  small  boy  let  no  grass  grow  under  his  feet 
getting  down  stairs,  but  before  he  got  there,  the 
trade  had  been  made.  Adolph  had  traded  his 
birth-right  for  the  miserable,  worn-out,  old  demo- 
crat wagon.  Shrieking  after  Adolph  that  he  could 
shoot  it  whenever  he  wanted  to,  when  his  father 
handed  him  the  gun,  he  hugged  it  to  his  breast 
and  made  for  his  room — literally  with  a  heart  too 
full  for  utterance.  Driving  a  couple  of  nails  in 
the  wall  at  the  foot  of  his  bed,  he  hung  the  gun 
where  he  could  see  it  the  last  thing  at  night  and 
the  first  thing  in  the  morning,  and  it  strangely  sup- 
plemented the  influence  of  "Anderson's  Travels 
in  Africa."  Like  a  witch  on  a  broom-stick,  the 
small  boy  rode  that  gun  through  the  darkest  cor- 
ners of  the  Dark  Continent,  and  became  a  killer 
compared  to  whom  Samson  with  his  ass's  jaw- 
bone was  superseded.  In  his  dreams,  he  shot  up 
the  world  and  all  things  therein,  and  like  Alex- 
ander, wept  that  there  were  no  more  worlds  to 
shoot  up.  The  dawn's  first  flush  and  the  last  red 
banner  in  the  evening  sky,  stood  as  marking  the 
place  where  rivers  of  blood  flowed.  It  was  a  lucky 
thing  that  the  owner  of  the  "Green  Book,"  "An- 
derson's Travels  in  Africa,"  did  not  come  to  claim 
it,  especially  had  he  not  been  willing  to  take  a 


Motherless  Babies  35 

small  boy  as  well  as  the  book,  for  he  could  scarcely 
have  separated  them.  There  must  be  some  scien- 
tific, some  psychological  explanation  of  the  effect 
of  this  old  gun  and  the  bloody  account  of  killing 
big  game  in  Africa,  upon  the  mind  of  a  naturally 
tender-hearted  little  chap.  Without  at  all  claim- 
ing to  be  a  "Daniel  come  to  judgment,"  here  is  a 
possible  explanation.  In  every  human  heart  is  a 
desire  for  conquest,  dominion;  the  gun  gives  us 
dominion  over  savage  nature, — the  power  of  life 
and  death — the  very  attribute  of  kings.  Add  to 
this,  the  joy  of  the  chase,  a  reversion  to  a  savage 
ancestor  and  the  universal  lust  to  kill  becomes  less 
mysterious.  There  being  no  elephants,  or  lions 
within  range,  he  had  to  content  himself  with  the 
smaller  things  that  the  forests  of  his  own  coun- 
try afforded,  insignificant  though  they  were.  The 
first  time  he  shot  the  head  off  a  red-winged  black- 
bird, flaunting  on  a  cat-tail,  a  hundred  yards  away, 
cutting  it  away  with  a  bullet,  he  seemed  to  grow 
a  foot ;  eleven  gophers  with  ten  bullets,  put  him  in 
the  ranks  with  "Simon  Kenton,"  that  grand  In- 
dian fighter  who  never  missed.  The  shooting  of 
Abe  Brulley's  sheep-killing  dog,  at  twenty  rods, 
taken  red-handed,  so  to  speak,  and  he  had  con- 
quered the  earth  and  must  now  turn  his  attention 
to  the  sky  for  worlds  to  be  subdued.  Once  more, 
he  turned  to  Adolph  for  help. 

"Want  learn  shoot  on  wing?    Easy  'nuf.    Hold 


36       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

gun  under,  bring  gun  up,  shoot  ze  quick.  Thou- 
san'  misses  tell  how  fast  each  bird  go  quick.  Easy 
fnuf." 

So  far,  the  old  smooth  bore  had  been  used  as 
a  rifle  only,  not  with  fixed  ammunition,  thank  you, 
but  powder  from  a  flask,  a  piece  of  muslin  for  a 
patch,  and  bullets  run  from  spoons  that  his  sisters 
someway  lost  in  setting  the  table.  A  half  day's 
work  for  Culver,  hoeing  corn,  and  he  had  am- 
munition for  wing-shooting  that  ought  to  last 
a  week. 

Two  of  their  colts  had  wandered  away  and 
were  with  a  band  of  neighbors'  colts  down  at 
Hamilton's  Point.  The  thought  of  the  way  they 
might  be  suffering  touched  a  tender  spot  in  the 
small  boy's  gizzard,  and  he  was  almost  tearful 
as  he  begged  his  father  to  allow  him  to  go  and 
salt  them.  He  likely  would  have  wept  had  his 
father  not  given  his  consent,  for  if  the  truth  must 
be  known,  he  could  not  wait  another  day  to  try 
wing-shooting.  The  gun  was  already  hidden  in 
a  fence  corner  out  near  the  little  woods,  for  his 
father  had  clearly  repented  of  his  trade  with 
Adolph,  and  had  shown  himself  strongly  antago- 
nistic to  his  son's  evident  ambition  to  become  a 
mighty  hunter.  On  one  point,  he  was  inflexible, 
no  wild  things  must  be  killed  in  the  breeding  sea- 
son, hence  the  gun  in  the  fence-corner.  Indeed, 
there  are  few  things  as  rare  as  a  day  in  June, 


Motherless  Babies  37 

and  never  had  a  brighter  one  dawned,  to  make 
glad  the  earth.  If  the  small  boy  hadn't  had  the 
gun,  perhaps  he  wouldn't  have  felt  so  much  like 
flying,  but  if  it  were  the  cause  of  that  wild  ex- 
uberance, it  held  it  in  check  by  its  own  weight, 
that  pretty  effectually  kept  his  feet  on  the  earth. 
Only  one  more  field  to  cross,  and  he  would  be 
out  on  the  Point,  over  which  ducks  flew  between 
the  Lake  and  inlet,  and  he  would  have  a  try  at 
them,  and  get  them,  too,  and  people  would  say 
of  him  as  they  said  of  Simon  Kenton,  "Our  hunter 
never  misses."  No,  that  was  almost  too  much 
to  hope, — that  he  could  ever  really  gain  such 
deathless  fame.  There  had  been  a  law-suit  over 
this  land,  and  the  previous  year  it  had  not  been 
cultivated  at  all,  but  had  grown  up  to  weeds, 
higher  than  his  head.  Suddenly,  a  great  bird 
got  up  almost  at  his  feet.  It  seems  as  though 
the  little  Frenchman  is  at  his  elbow  telling  him 
what  to  do,  and  he  does  it  like  a  flash,  and  down 
comes  the  dead  thing — not  four  yards  away.  Yes, 
it  was  like  Kenton,  he,  too,  was  destined  to  have 
that  glorious  reputation,  "Our  hunter  never 
missed."  But  what  are  these  gray  shadows  at 
his  feet,  living  things  turning  into  dead  leaves,  as 
Pete  Jackson  had  told  him  Baby  Quail  could.  All 
this  he  sees  out  of  the  tail  of  his  eye,  as  he  rushes 
to  gather  up  his  prize.  A  Prairie  Chicken, — 
not  bad  for  a  first  wing-shot,  brother  Kenton? — 


38       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

but,  as  he  turns  it  over,  its  bare  breast  throws  a 
flood  of  light  on  the  living  things  turning  into 
dead  leaves,  at  a  note  of  warning  from  the  mother 
bird  that  he  has  killed.  Instantly,  he  is  in  a  panic, 
a  revulsion  of  feeling  sweeps  over  him  that  will 
break  his  heart  unless  he  can  do  something  to 
stay  its  fury.  Away  goes  the  gun,  and  the  salt 
out  of  the  pail,  and  he  is  down  on  his  knees 
searching  everywhere  for  the  motherless  chicks. 
They  elude  him,  like  the  phantom  shadows  we 
pursue  in  unhappy  dreams.  His  thought  had 
been  to  capture  them  all,  and  put  them  in  the  salt 
pail  and  carry  them  home  to  be  mothered  by  a 
hen;  for  he  knew  that  old  Spot,  who  wanted  to 
mother  the  kitten  when  the  hawks  carried  away 
her  own  chicks,  would  take  them  all.  He  went 
over  the  ground  again  and  again,  and  when  search 
had  to  be  abandoned  as  hopeless,  he  had  one  chick 
that  he  had  stepped  on  with  his  bare  foot  and 
crushed  its  life  out.  When  he  dropped  the  dead 
mother  to  pursue  the  young,  she  had  fallen  on 
her  back  with  her  pitiful  naked  breast  still  oozing 
blood,  calling  to  the  God  of  all  mercies,  the  small 
boy  thought,  for  vengeance.  Putting  the  dead 
baby  bird  upon  the  pulseless  bosom  of  its  mother, 
he  cast  himself  down  beside  both, — a  forlorn 
little  Cain,  who  could  find  no  place  of  repentance 
though  he  sought  it  with  tears.  A  couple  of 
lines  that  Kipling  wrote  long  afterward,  came 


Motherless  Babies  39 

nearer  than  anything  else  ever  written  to  voicing 
the  speechless  agony  of  his  soul. 

"Till  I  lay  with  naught  to  hide  me, 
'Neath  the  Scorn  of  All  Things  Made." 

It  must  have  been  to  save  him  from  this  sense 
of  blood  guiltiness  that  his  father  had  forbidden 
all  shooting  in  the  breeding  season.  To  do  what 
he  had  done  was  a  crime  that  the  good  deeds  of 
a  life-time  would  scarcely  over  balance  or  ex- 
piate. A  sense  of  the  meanness  and  shame  of 
it  grew  as  he  buried  the  mother  and  the  crushed 
chick  in  the  same  little  grave,  dug  by  his  naked 
hands — hands  that  seemed  anxious  to  cover  up 
the  stain  of  blood  with  the  stain  of  earth.  He 
never  looked  up  the  colts;  making  that  the  object 
of  the  expedition  had  been  a  lie,  and  this  is  what 
it  had  brought  him, — a  lasting  stain  on  his  very 
soul.  It  was  not  the  gun's  fault,  he  thought,  as 
he  shouldered  it  and  started  the  longest  way 
around  to  reach  home,  trudging  dully  along,  feel- 
ing that  its  dead  weight  was  a  kind  of  an  expia- 
tion. It  was  long  after  dark  when  he  reached 
home,  and  hiding  the  gun  in  the  granary,  he  crept 
supperless  up  to  bed.  He  undressed  by  fierce 
flashes  of  lightning  that  kept  nearly  a  continuous 
blaze  in  the  room,  and  they  proved  the  precursor 
of  wind,  rain,  and  hail  that  swept  the  earth  and 
also  the  shuddering  soul  of  the  small  boy  that 


40       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

was  out  in  all  the  tempest  struggling  in  vain,  to 
shield  from  the  merciless  fury  of  the  elements, 
the  helpless  things  whose  mother  he  had  ruth- 
lessly slain.  Rain  and  years  wash  out  many 
things,  but  the  June  day  that  went  down  in  black- 
ness, and  the  night  of  storm  following,  left  an 
ineffaceable  sense  of  shame  and  regret  that  would 
only  pass  with  the  mouldering  back  to  dust  of  the 
brain  upon  which  it  was  stamped. 

When  the  very  next  day  his  two  doves,  leaving 
a  pair  of  young  birds  at  home,  flew  down  to  the 
village  and  were  seen  picking  up  grain  around 
the  mill,  and  were  promptly  shot  by  Dr.  Coffee, 
the  small  boy  felt  that  his  crime  was  not  to  pass 
unnoticed.  Had  he  been  aware  of  the  fact  com- 
mented on  by  Shakespeare  so  many  years  ago, 
when  he  wrote  of  sucking  doves,  he  need  not  have 
felt  so  bad  when  his  squabs  both  died  for  want 
of  the  predigested  food  they  get  from  their  par- 
ents. About  the  only  fun  that  the  small  boy  had 
at  this  time  was  the  joy  of  hating  Dr.  Coffee,  and 
there  is  a  good  bit  of  evidence,  of  a  circumstan- 
tial character,  that  would  indicate  that  he  never 
fully  forgave  him  for  killing  his  doves  in  the 
breeding  season.  To  be  sure,  he  had  shot  the 
Prairie  Chicken,  but  he  didn't  know  any  better 
and  there  was  no  excuse  of  that  kind  to  mitigate 
the  crime  of  Dr.  Coffee,  and  he  would  get  his 
punishment  either  in  this  world  or  the  next.  For 


Motherless  Babies  41 

many  years,  he  had  a  secret  hope  that  every 
crowd  started  by  an  evangelist  for  the  everlasting 
burning,  was  headed  by  this  enormously  fat  Doc- 
tor, who  would  have  burned  grandly;  and  when 
the  small  boy  not  only  a  man  himself,  but  one 
growing  old,  encountered  old  Dr.  Coffee,  deafer 
than  an  adder,  and  boarding  at  a  hotel,  because 
he  was  too  ugly  to  live  with  his  children,  and 
actually  feeing  the  night-clerk,  every  night,  to  pull 
him  out  of  bed  in  case  of  a  fire  alarm  that  he 
would  never  hear,  he  not  only  was  not  sorry  but 
he  grinned  from  ear  to  ear,  still  remembering 
the  doves. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   KEEPER   OF  THE   SPRING-HOUSE 

Directly  in  front  of  a  new  summer  hotel  on 
a  hill,  and  across  a  public  road  on  the  margin  of 
the  lake,  was  a  cheap  and  impromptu  spring 
house. 

It  had  a  gabled  roof,  was  about  six  by  eight 
in  size,  and  was  closed  in  with  lattice  work,  with 
the  exception  of  a  place  for  a  door  on  the  road 
side.  The  simple  affair  was  scarcely  finished, 
when  the  roof  was  taken  possession  of  by  a  Belted 
Kingfisher,  who  became  known  somewhat  widely 
as  "The  Keeper  of  the  Spring-house,"  the  name 
probably  growing  out  of  the  fact  that  he  was 
rarely  caught  off  duty,  from  early  spring  till  late 
in  the  fall.  In  a  figurative  way,  it  might  be  said 
of  him  that  he  both  opened  and  closed  the  season ; 
arriving  ahead  of  the  south  wind  and  the  first 
shy  violets,  rollicking  through  the  summer  and 
painted  October,  and  saying  a  reluctant  farewell 
when  the  north  wind  chased  a  cloud  of  reluctant 
snow  flakes  into  the  black  and  sullen  waters  of 
the  lake. 

42 


The  Keeper  of  the  Spring-House         43 

He  took  possession  without  so  much  as,  by 
your  leave,  taking  the  liberty  of  an  old  friend, — 
for  he  and  the  man  had  known  each  other  all 
their  lives  and  what  could  be  more  natural,  now 
that  the  man  had  a  big  house  of  his  own,  than 
his  building  a  cheap  summer  affair  for  a  long- 
time friend?  Anyway  the  man  never  questioned 
his  ownership,  and  how  the  Kingfisher  hated  the 
small  boy  who  did.  If  he  had  any  system  of 
Theology,  he  must  have  classified  all  boys  as  the 
devil's  imps  from  the  bottomless  pit.  They  in- 
vaded twice  a  day,  before  nine  in  the  morning 
and  shortly  after  four  in  the  afternoon,  his  house, 
and  actually  attacked  the  keeper — assaulting  him 
with  volleys  of  stones.  He  shrieked  his  hatred 
and  impotent  rage  at  them  and  retreated,  routed 
by  an  army  of  devils;  but  if  they  had  all  been  of 
his  size,  he  would  have  watched  his  chance  and 
captured  them,  one  by  one,  and  tearing  them  limb 
from  limb,  fed  them  to  his  own  nestlings. 

He  did  not  hate  the  man,  and  indeed  he  had  no 
reason  to,  for  neither  he  nor  any  of  his  family 
had  ever  received  anything  but  kindness  at  his 
hands.  To  be  sure,  there  was  a  time,  when  he 
had  been  a  boy,  and  came  very  near  acting  like 
all  boys ;  but  in  a  way  he  had  never  been  young, — 
if  thoughtlessness  is  the  universal  badge  of  youth 
— -for  even  his  boyish  pranks  had  been  seasoned 
with  a  consideration  for  the  rights  of  living 


44       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

things,  that  is  not  always,  alas,  characteristic  of 
mature  age.  Every  Kingfisher  on  the  Lake 
knows  to  this  day,  how  he  and  his  brother  had 
worked  for  nearly  a  whole  day  to  dig  out  a 
grand-father  and  grand-mother  Kingfishers'  nest 
in  the  high  bank  near  "Gray  Rock,"  and  then  and 
there  repented  of  their  evil  deeds,  and  spent  a 
half  day  longer  to  repair  the  injury  they  had  done. 
There  is  an  old  and  truly  scientific  saying,  that  all 
life  conies  from  an  egg,  and  perhaps  it  is  a  sub- 
conscious curiosity,  that  in  some  way  never  leaves 
us,  about  the  origin  of  life,  that  makes  a  natural 
nest  robber  of  every  child.  Though  only  eight 
and  ten  years  old,  they  were  wiser  than  the  an- 
cients, if  there  be  truth  to  the  story  that  they 
called  the  Kingfisher  a  Halcyon,  and  thought  it 
made  its  nest  on  the  water  in  stormless  periods, 
from  which  the  term  "Halcyon  days"  has  come 
down  to  us.  How  these  urchins  would  have 
laughed  at,  and  exulted  over,  those  old  worthies 
if  they  had  known  of  the  myth.  To  think  that 
they  could  never  find  a  single  nest  when  the  boys 
knew  of  three  or  four — what  boobies  they  must 
have  been — it  is  likely  that  we  fail  to  give  an  idea 
of  the  scorn  they  would  have  felt  and  expressed 
picturesquely. 

My,  but  the  sun  was  red  hot,  and  had  his  eye 
directly  upon  them,  when  they  settled  down  at 
the  lure  of  a  possible  white  egg,  whose  existence 


The  Keeper  of  the  Spring-House         45 

so  far  was  hearsay,  to  dig  their  way  back  in  a 
gravelly  soil,  with  a  worn-out  fire  shovel,  till  the 
treasure  should  be  revealed,  a  reward  of  both 
merit  and  labor,  a  veritable  prize,  for  barring  the 
eggs  of  the  oriole ;  no  others  were  so  hard  to  get. 
Their  education  had  not  proceeded  far  enough 
so  they  could  get  the  stimulus  of  knowing  that 
they  were  digging  like  "badgers'* — the  animal  on 
the  coat  of  arms  of  their  state — which  was  the 
fact;  but  it  is  doubtful  if  even  that  creature,  whose 
burrowing  ability  is  undoubted,  would  have  as- 
sayed a  tunnel  in  the  kind  of  soil  in  which  they 
were  working.  That  beastly  fire-shovel — they 
quickly  christened  it  "Mr.  Angleworm,"  for  it 
would  double  up  in  their  hands  and  twist  in  any 
direction,  except  straight  ahead,  when  they  at- 
tempted to  force  it  any  distance  in  the  stubborn, 
sticky  clay.  They  had  scarcely  half  finished  their 
task,  when  they  noticed  that  the  sun  no  longer 
looked  squarely  down  upon  them,  but  was  watch- 
ing them  from  over  his  right  shoulder,  to  the  west. 
They  had  had  no  dinner  but  they  did  not  know  it. 
They  had  forgotten  the  cries  of  the  old  birds, 
were  unmindful  of  their  blistered  hands, — in  fact, 
those  hands  only  itched  for  one  thing,  the  joy  of 
grasping  the  white  egg,  that  could  be  only  a  little 
way  ahead.  They  had  been  carrying  the  dirt  out 
in  their  hats,  but  they  could  do  that  no  longer, 
for  they  had  commenced  to  strike  pellets  that 


46       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

reeked  of  corruption,  and  made  them  sick  at  the 
stomach.  Necessity  is  the  Mother  of  invention, 
— when  they  could  no  longer  use  their  hats,  they 
tore  the  lining  from  the  sleeve  of  an  old  jacket 
they  found  on  the  shore,  knotted  it  at  one  end  and 
had  a  sack  for  their  dirt.  The  horrible,  pesti- 
lential odor  got  worse  and  worse;  it  strangled, 
throttled  them,  and  they  could  neither  quit  nor 
go  on.  A  merciful  providence  took  the  matter 
out  of  their  hands ;  they  suddenly  heard  noises  at 
the  end  of  the  tunnel,  and  using  both  hands  as  a 
telescope,  beyond  a  field  of  carrion  fish-bones,  they 
could  see  the  heads  and  open  mouths  of  young 
birds.  One  glance  into  each  other's  eyes,  and 
impelled  by  a  common  impulse,  they  fell  over 
each  other  in  their  efforts  to  get  out  of  their 
tunnel,  they  rolled  over  each  other  in  their  haste 
to  get  down  the  bank  and  bury  their  perspiring 
faces  in  the  friendly  water.  It  was  delicious: 
stripping  off  shirt  and  trousers,  they  plunged  in 
bodily,  and  like  a  good  nurse  in  sickness,  the  lake 
bathed  their  bodies, — cooling  the  blood  that  for 
hours  had  been  almost  at  fever  heat  and  washing 
away  the  grime  from  face  and  hands — but  the 
odor  in  their  nostrils  seemed  beyond  her,  and  did 
not  pass  for  hours;  not,  in  fact,  till  sleep,  the 
great  restorer,  came  with  her  poppy  juice,  that 
wipes  away  the  world  and  all  things  therein. 
It  began  to  thunder  before  morning,  and  the 


The  Keeper  of  the  Spring-House         47 

first  peal  roused  the  "Deacon/'  and  if  he  had  not, 
in  fact,  dreamed  about  them,  his  first  waking 
thought  was  a  confused  jumble  of  young  Prairie 
Chickens  and  young  Kingfishers  at  the  mercy  of 
the  elements.  If  it  rained  and  the  water  rushed 
down  that  bank,  they  would  be  drowned.  They, 
the  nest  robbers,  were  responsible.  Their  duty 
was  clear;  it  meant  he  and  Hod  to  the  rescue. 
He  roused  his  brother,  never  mind  whether  it 
was  by  threats  or  promises,  and  it  was  getting 
light  when  they  stole  out  of  the  house  to  pilfer 
two  lengths  of  stove  pipe  from  the  granary,  got 
a  spade,  and  headed  for  the  lake  at  a  rate  called 
by  military  tacticians,  a  forced  march.  The  two 
lengths  when  joined  together  were  a  little  too 
long,  but  when  a  fellow  was  doing  the  best  he 
could,  what  more  could  be  expected  of  him !  They 
talked  it  over  on  their  way  back  to  the  rescue. 
How  could  they  know  that  they  would  find  young 
birds? — and  they  wouldn't,  either,  if  those  fool 
parents  hadn't  been  in  such  a  hurry  about  getting 
to  house-keeping.  When  they  finally  got  the 
stove-pipe  in  place, — just  where  the  old  tunnel 
had  been,  and  the  earth  well  packed  around  it, — 
they  couldn't  stay  to  see  if  the  birds  would  use  it 
or  npt,  for  what  had  threatened  to  be  a  thunder 
shower,  proved  a  deluge,  and  they  had  to  seek 
refuge  among  the  trees  of  the  Seminary  Land. 
It  was  nearly  a  week,  before  they  got  back  to 


48       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

examine  their  handiwork,  and  to  their  delight 
they  saw  the  mother  bird  perched  on  the  end  of 
the  length  of  stove-pipe, — at  peace  with  all  the 
world.  This  was  before  she  spied  the  boys — or 
we  could  never  have  used  that  reference  to  peace. 
In  view  of  all  their  labors,  they  felt  rather  sur- 
prised at  the  nature  of  the  blessing  she  was  call- 
ing down  upon  their  heads;  but  what  boy  ever 
took  anything  to  heart,  in  the  way  of  personal 
abuse!  Soon  they  were  laughing  at  her,  and  as 
boys  never  feel  real  well  acquainted  with  a  thing 
till  they  have  given  it  a  new  name,  they  forthwith 
christened  her  "Stove-pipe  Jinny" ;  and  when  the 
Papa  bird  put  in  an  appearance,  they  dubbed  him 
"Gluey  Bill."  How  boys  get  names  for  things  is 
not  easy  to  tell,  but  in  the  name  of  "Gluey  Bill," 
the  reference  is  obvious  enough.  The  furniture 
at  home  had  come  from  Pennsylvania,  and  at  the 
last  end  of  the  journey  had  been  drawn  by  ox 
team  over  seventy  miles  of  corduroy  road;  hence 
the  glue  pot,  that  never  was  known  to  smell  like 
a  flower,  was  among  the  household  gods, — and 
the  Kingfisher's  nest  had  every  such  odor  on  earth 
beaten  to  a  frazzle.  Surely  the  Divine  Goodness 
must  have  withheld  from  the  baby  Kingfisher, 
olfactory  glands — or  that  goodness  may  be  ques- 
tioned. From  "Gluey  Bill,"  the  name,  through 
some  natural  stage  of  contraction,  became 
"Gooey  Bill,"  and  her  name  "Jinny  Pipe," — and 


The  Keeper  of  the  Spring-House         49 

so  they  will  remain  to  man's  last  syllable  of 
recorded  time. 

Shade  of  Ike  Walton,  as  a  fisherman  in  com- 
parison to  either  "Jinny  Pipe"  or  "Gooey  Bill," 
you  are  as  a  pollywog  to  a  whale.  "Patience  on 
a  monument,"  come  and  hire  yourself  out  as  an 
understudy  to  the  "Keeper  of  the  Spring-house." 
All  American  Eagles,  in  the  name  of  common 
honesty,  I  call  upon  you  to  dissolve  your  robbers' 
trust,  and  come  and  learn  from  "Gooey  Bill"  how 
to  get  a  living  on  the  square;  "The  Keeper  of 
the  Spring-house"  would  scorn  seines,  snag  lines 
or  phantom  bait, — nothing  under-handed  about 
him.  In  the  gray  of  the  morning,  when  he  comes 
sweeping  down  the  shore  from  the  bluffs  along 
Sherwood  Forest,  he  is  sounding  his  rattle  all  the 
way,  and  when  he  hits  the  roof  at  his  old  fishing- 
place,  he  calls  to  all  the  little  fishes,  "Here  I  am, 
and  it's  to  be  a  fair  fight  and  no  favor."  When 
I  read  how  the  Psalmist  said  all  fishermen  are 
liars,  then  my  Kingfisher  is  my  refuge  and  a  very 
present  help  in  trouble;  'tis  the  "Keeper  of  the 
Spring-house"  who  has  made  it  possible  for  me 
to  find  a  sermon  in  a  fisherman,  and  consequently 
good  in  everything. 

Once  upon  a  time  the  Man's  Wife  and  little 
daughter,  with  a  party  of  friends,  were  out  in  a 
little  gasoline  boat,  and  when  they  started  away 
the  skies  were  as  sweet  as  Tennyson's  "Dream  of 


50       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

Fair  Women,"  but  when  rounding  "Norwegian 
Bay,"  on  their  way  home,  the  engine  stopped  and 
a  sudden  gale  struck  them  the  same  instant. 
There  is  no  'bottom  to  the  lake  along  the  rocks  at 
"Lone  Tree,"  toward  which  the  frail  craft  was 
being  carried.  On  the  other  side  of  "Sugar 
Loaf,"  which  is  a  promontory,  the  Steamer 
"Queen  of  the  Lake,"  was  also  making  for  home 
with  her  load  of  passengers, — among  whom  was 
a  Bird-Lover  watching  the  shore  with  a  pair  of 
opera  glasses.  Suddenly  coming  directly  from 
the  shore  toward  the  steamer,  she  saw  a  King- 
fisher, and  circling,  within  ten  feet  of  it,  he 
uttered  an  alarm  cry  and  flew  toward  "Lone 
Tree."  Watching  the  bird,  she  saw  the  signals 
of  distress  from  the  gasoline  boat, — and  the 
steamer  put  about  and  arrived  just  in  time  for  a 
neat  and  spectacular  rescue. 

When  the  man  heard  the  story  of  how  the 
Kingfisher  had  seemingly  called  attention  to  the 
imminent  wreck,  he  with  the  rest  made  light  of 
it ;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  added  it  to  certain 
fancies  long  hidden  in  his  heart,  and  as  he  tells 
them  now,  he  wonders  if  any  one  will  really  un- 
derstand. To  him,  all  Kingfishers  are  related 
to  "Jinny  Pipe"  and  "Gooey  Bill" ;  they  are  a  part 
of  his  youth,  and  have  their  place  among  his  early 
play-mates.  The  Kingfisher  to  the  rescue,  was 
just  a  coincidence,  but  a  mighty  pleasant  thing 


The  Keeper  of  the  Spring-House         51 

to  remember  about  an  old  friend,  all  the  same. 
He  doesn't  pretend  to  know  what  such  a  bird  may 
stand  for  in  your  life,  and  he  couldn't  make  you 
understand  all  it  stands  for  in  his.  But  it's  not 
the  Robin  or  the  Blue-bird  that  is  the  first  to 
announce  to  him  that  Winter  has  finally  capitu- 
lated, and  is  in  full  retreat ;  this  news  comes  from 
the  exultant  rattle  of  the  Kingfisher,  causing  the 
child's  heart  within  the  man,  to  start  and  trem- 
ble, and  the  welcome  he  extends  is  always  quite 
voiceless,  for  it  is  only  his  heart  that  says,  "Hello, 
'Jinny  Pipe';  Hello,  'Gooey  Bill.'"  And  when 
the  summer  is  over  and  gone,  and  October's  last 
picture  has  faded  and  the  tubes  are  twisted  and 
dried,  his  heart  in  voiceless  farewell  always  says, 
"Good-bye,  'Jinny  Pipe';  Good-bye,  'Gooey 
Bill,'  "  and  the  talk  about  the  "Keeper  of  the 
Spring-house"  at  such  a  moment  seems  as  a  tale 
that  is  told. 


CHAPTER  V 

WINGS,  WINGS,  WINGS 

Naturally  enough  we  have  been  so  intoxicated 
with  the  splendors  of  the  civilization  coming  to 
the  wilderness  of  Wisconsin,  in  a  little  over  half 
a  century,  that  we  have  had  ears  for  no  adverse 
criticism,  and  eyes  for  no  visions  of  havoc,  piti- 
less destruction,  and  wide  desolation  wrought  by 
our  conquering  world  God.  We  willingly  ad- 
mit that  it  seems  to  be  the  established  order  of 
the  Universe  that  for  something  to  live,  some- 
thing must  die;  however,  such  an  admission  does 
in  no  way  take  from  us  the  natural  and  inalienable 
right  to  protest  to  such  a  law,  fundamental  though 
it  be.  Civilization  not  only  takes  toll  of  all 
weaker  forms  of  life  that  stand  in  its  way;  it  does 
more,  it  exterminates,  it  annihilates,  and  its  word 
has  gone  out  to  all  the  wild  life  on  the  face  of  the 
earth:  "Where  I  am,  there  ye  cannot  be." 

Strangely  enough,  the  small  boy  seemed  to  have 
some  dim  sense  of  this,  for  he  had  a  feeling  that 
the  passers  in  the  sky  must  have  his  attention  first, 
— over  the  things  that  had  a  local  and  nearby 

52 


Wings,  Wings  53 

home.  Ah!  those  myriad  things  that  came  out 
of  the  southern  sky  in  the  spring  and  disappeared, 
always  flying  north, — would  they  ever  come  back? 
It  seemed  unlikely,  and  in  his  soul  was  the  fore- 
boding fear  that  the  hour  drew  on  apace  when 
his  eyes  would  search  the  desolation  of  vast  fields 
of  space  and  find  no  passing  wing.  It  had  been 
the  great  flocks,  spring  and  fall — especially  spring 
— that  had  taught  him  his  A.B.Cs  of  migration. 
The  native,  home  birds  that  would  be  gone  to- 
day and  back  to-morrow — with  no  appearance  of 
ever  having  been  away — scarcely  suggested  it; 
but  the  countless  millions  going  by  in  the  light 
of  the  sun,  often  darkening  it  like  a  cloud, — 
coming  from  nowhere,  and  disappearing  into  no- 
where— these  were  the  obvious  migrants,  these 
the  real  world  voyagers.  The  wings,  the  wings, 
the  wings  that  gave  a  living  thing  the  emancipa- 
tion from  the  earth  enjoyed  by  a  cloud,  the  speed 
of  the  wind,  and  enabled  them  to  traverse  high- 
ways whose  only  street  lamps  were  the  stars, — 
for  he  heard  them  going  by  in  the  night. 

The  living  cloud  from  the  sky  that  had  struck 
him  dumb  that  first  spring,  had  been  a  vast  flock 
of  Passenger  Pigeons.  Clearly  they  had  no  fear 
of  the  little  tad  standing  on  a  hill  alone,  and 
swept  by,  not  a  dozen  feet  above  his  head,  with 
the  sound  of  a  rushing,  mighty  wind ;  and  both  the 
wind  and  the  sound  were  real  enough,  for  the 


54       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

one  left  him  bare-headed,  and  the  other  half 
deafened  him;  and  fear  gripped  his  heart  lest,  in 
what  seemed  the  onward  rush  of  all  things,  the 
wings  would  carry  him  away.  How  beautiful 
they  were,  how  graceful, — many  had  the  flush  of 
both  the  dawn  and  the  evening  sky  on  their  breast, 
and  the  eyes  with  which  they  looked  at  you  were 
fearless  and  full  of  confidence.  No  one  knew  it 
at  that  time  but  they  constituted  America's  one 
characteristic  "Moving  Picture" — that  all  the 
countless  billions  of  money  since  produced  by  our 
Civilization  could  not  now  replace.  But  more 
than  this;  let  us  suppose  the  physician  of  one  of 
our  multi-millionaires,  J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  said 
to  be  dying  at  Rome,  had  ordered  for  him  a  Pas- 
senger Pigeon,  as  the  one  thing  that  would  save 
his  life,  the  expenditure  of  his  entire  fortune,  of 
fifty  millions,  would  not  have  obtained  it  for  him. 
This  was  the  bird  that  the  early  settler  netted, 
trapped,  pounded  from  the  roost  by  wagon  loads 
and  fed  to  hogs  and  used  as  fertilizer,  and  slaugh- 
tered and  left  where  they  fell  to  rot.  Under  the 
old  Mosaic  Law,  a  young,  domestic  Pigeon  might 
be  offered  up  as  a  sacrifice  for  sin,  but  the  Civil- 
ization tljat  we  are  expected  to  teach  our  children 
to  regard  as  splendid,  allowed  all  our  wild 
pigeons  to  be  sacrificed  for  naught;  and  the  shame 
of  their  destruction  should  evermore  be  chronicled 
among  our  national  sins. 


Wings,  Wings,  Wings  55 

In  numbers,  next  to  the  pigeons,  came  the  ducks 
in  flocks  so  vast  that  the  individual  members 
seemed  as  the  stars  of  heaven.  The  pigeons  be- 
longed to  a  single  variety,  'but  the  ducks  to  in- 
numerable varieties — no  two  of  whom  seemed 
alike.  When  the  hunting  was  good  in  the  fall, 
as  Adolph  put  it, — which  simply  meant  the  birds 
had  come  down  from  the  north, — he  often  took 
the  small  boy  with  him  to  help  retrieve  the  game ; 
and  that  meant  to  help  pick  up  a  boat  load.  At 
such  times  he  would  devote  some  attention  to 
the  small  boy's  education,  when  they  unloaded 
and  sorted  the  duck,  by  telling  him  the  names 
of  the  different  kinds.  The  small  boy  long  cher- 
ished in  his  memory  some  of  the  names,  though 
at  the  time  he  half  suspected  that  the  resourceful 
little  Frenchman  depended  for  them  more  upon 
his  imagination  than  upon  his  memory;  "Ze 
Melard,  ze  blue  and  green-winged  tel,  ze  butter 
bel,  ze  wisle  wing,  ze  wood,  ze  canvas  cover,  ze 
pin  tail,  ze  old  squaw."  The  last  two  names 
were  accepted  with  great  mental  reservation  and 
were  regarded  as  likely  imaginary, — but  turned 
out  to  be  correct.  Adolph  thought  he  was  doing 
a  land  office  business  if  he  got  60  cents  a  dozen 
for  his  ducks,  often,  half  of  which  were  Canvas- 
back;  and  no  one  dreamed  that  the  time  would 
ever  come  when  duck  of  that  variety  would  sell 
in  the  New  York  market  for  $10.00  each, — a  price 


56       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

easily  realized  to-day.  While  vast  numbers  went 
on  farther  north,  multitudes  remained  and  nested 
in  every  lake,  river,  creek  and  little  pond,  and 
could  be  seen  swimming  around  later  in  the  sea- 
son in  the  midst  of  their  broods — almost  like  do- 
mesticated ducks,  with  whom  they  occasionally 
mixed  freely. 

Culver,  Hamilton,  and  Spaulding  ponds  con- 
tained many  such  families,  but  in  Culver's,  the 
smallest  of  the  three  and  the  nearest  to  the  vil- 
lage, all  were  shot  early  in  the  season;  leaving 
open  water  there  for  three  families  of  Wood- 
duck  that  later  on  took  possession  with  their 
pretty  broods.  It  was  the  small  boy's  first  sum- 
mer in  the  wilderness  and  he  became  much  inter- 
ested in  these  families  of  wild  things,  and  was  on 
a  fair  way  to  a  friendly  acquaintance,  when  one 
Sunday  while  at  Sunday-school,  some  Christian 
hunter  visited  the  pond  and  killed  four  of  the  old 
birds  and  slightly  wounded  a  fifth — a  male  that 
later  on  died;  this  left  one  mother  bird  and  seven 
ducklings.  The  wild  mother  in  spite  of  her  good 
reasons  to  distrust  man,  soon  overcame  her  fear 
of  the  little  tad  who  came,  literally,  casting  his 
bread  upon  the  water.  How  the  bright-eyed,  in- 
credibly swift-motioned  little  fellows  would 
scramble  for  it;  and  they  knew  who  brought  it 
better  than  the  small  boy's  sister,  who  had  so 


Wings,  Wings,  Wings  57 

iriuch  to  say  about  his  appetite  for  bread  and 
butter  meals. 

A  perfect  gentleman,  whose  name  was  Darling 
and  who  had  a  business  named  after  him  in  a 
nearby  town,  came  over  to  sell  Culver  a  patent- 
right, — and  got  the  wild  mother  and  four  of  her 
babies  who  could  not  fly — and  a  mink  mercifully 
prevented  the  remainder  from  starving  to  death. 
For  a  few  days  after  this,  had  the  teacher  hap- 
pened to  glance  at  the  small  boy's  slate,  she  would 
have  seen  the  word  Darling  and  might  have  con- 
cluded that  she  had  surprised  a  first  love  affair; 
but  she  would  have  been  miles  from  the  truth,  for 
that  represented  to  him  no  term  of  endearment, 
but  an  active  little  flame  of  pretty-fierce  hatred. 
The  capital  "D"  was  the  one  significant  letter 
and  it  stood  for  a  certain  lean,  hungry  gentleman 
whose  full  costume  comprised  hoofs,  horns  and  a 
tail. 

The  small  boy  knew  something  that  few  nature 
lovers  of  the  day  seem  to  know:  namely,  that  in 
the  bird  kingdom,  the  duck  is  the  natural  and 
irresistible  harlequin.  Imagine  a  quiet  sheet  of 
water,  on  a  peaceful  October  late  afternoon,  cov- 
ered with  countless  thousands  of  ducks — before 
they  had  become  the  gun-shy  creatures  of  to-day 
— and  it  requires  no  further  imagination  to  see 
before  you  a  Water  Circus,  the  like  of  which  you 


58       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

never  saw  on  earth :  unless  your  memory  carries 
you  back  to  the  early  days  in  the  wilderness  when 
it  still  belonged  to  wild  things.  Our  base-ball, 
foot-ball,  and  College  field-day  become  tame  af- 
fairs in  comparison  to  the  duck  high  carnival. 
Of  course,  he  couldn't  see  it  all  quite  clearly  on 
account  of  the  flying  spray  that  they  scattered  to 
the  four  points  of  the  compass,  but  the  small  boy 
never  doubted  that  they  were  playing  "I  spy," 
"sheep  in  the  pen,"  "anty  over,"  and  "pullaway"; 
and  the  wild  screaming  joy  in  the  eternal  joy  of 
life  was  never  exceeded  since  the  stars  sang  to- 
gether at  the  dawn  of  Creation.  Where  all  this 
occurred,  there  is  neither  sight  nor  sound  of  liv- 
ing thing  to-day.  The  waters  are  in  uneasy  mo- 
tion, muttering  incoherent  complaints  to  the 
water  flags  that  line  the  shore,  and  whispering  in 
lonely  places,  the  forgotten  histories  of  all  life's 
yesterdays. 

Wings,  wings,  wings,  there  are  yet  wings  in 
the  upper  air  and  the  dimming  eyes  of  age  watch 
them  from  the  same  hill-top  where  the  eyes  of 
youth  followed  them  in  the  long  ago.  Canadian 
geese  in  military  precision  hurl  themselves  across 
the  sky,  at  an  altitude  where  no  fowler  can  do 
them  harm,  obedient  to  the  mysterious  call  of  the 
North.  Few  and  scattered  are  the  flocks  com- 
pared to  those  that  used  to  go  by  calling  to  each 
other  in  that  hoarse,  honking  cry,  that  falls  upon 


Wings,  Wings,  Wings  59 

the  ears  of  heaviness  and  sleep,  in  the  mid-night, 
as  an  "all's  well"  from  the  watchers  of  the  silent 
places.  Adolph  sometimes  shot  them  when  they 
stopped  to  rest  or  feed,  but  to  the  small  boy  it 
was  an  evil  act,  a  kind  of  a  treachery  to  a  stranger 
from  a  far  land  who  should  have  received  hos- 
pitality. How  big  they  were,  and  what  a  won- 
derful thing  a  wing  was  that  could  carry  such  a 
great  bird  through  the  sky,  as  fast  as  a  train  of 
cars  could  run  on  an  iron  track.  The  sky  made 
them  small,  but  the  earth  made  them  large,  and 
until  the  Frenchman  told  him  of  his  mistake,  he 
had  thought  them  the  largest  birds  in  the  world. 
Adolph  told  him  that  to  compare  them  to  a  Swan 
was  like  an  old  rooster  to  a  big  turkey. 

Adolph  also  told  him  that  swans  were  harder 
to  see  than  geese,  because  they  were  white  and 
flew  higher  and  did  not  keep  asking  you  to  come 
and  shoot  at  them — the  way  a  fool  goose  did. 
The  very  next  day  he  saw  them,  not  flying  in  a 
great  V-shaped  flock  as  he  had  expected,  but  in 
a  straight  line,  hard  to  tell  from  the  white  clouds 
that  hovered  about  them  and  whose  children  they 
seemed  to  be.  If  they  were  not  really  the  chil- 
dren of  the  clouds,  maybe  the  clouds  wanted  to 
race  with  them ;  but  as  he  watched  them  sail  along 
they  seemed  too  stately  to  race  with  anything, 
unless  it  might  be  with  their  own  shadows — and 
they  were  clearly  too  high  up  to  even  see  them. 


60       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

Of  all  the  things  with  wings,  they  seemed  the 
most  wonderful  and  farthest  removed  from  the 
common  earth  to  which  other  creatures  belonged, 
and  he  was  greatly  shocked  when  Adolph  told 
him  that  "Ze  woman,  she  use  ze  down  to  pretty 
ze  dress."  Not  long  after  this,  at  church,  he  saw 
a  very  beautiful  little  girl  wearing  a  blue  merino 
cloak,  with  a  hood  to  match,  trimmed  with  Swan's 
down,  and  was  not  shocked,  for  some  way  she, 
also,  seemed  a  child  of  the  white  clouds. 

The  cranes  going  by — 'way  up  in  the  blue  ether 
— with  their  weird  cry,  were  things  of  the  sky 
and  not  of  the  earth.  They  undoubtedly  had 
wings  but  they  did  not  seem  to  use  them,  but 
were  blown  along  the  great  currents  of  air, — a 
part  of  them, —  riding  on  their  backs,  with  their 
long  legs  stuck  out  behind  to  steer  with,  as  idle  as 
the  proverbial  painted  ship  upon  the  painted 
ocean.  In  later  years,  the  small  boy  had  to  very 
greatly  revise  his  notion  with  regard  to  the  crane 
as  a  super-terrestrial  creature,  and  it  became  not 
only  a  creature  of  the  earth,  but  of  the  low  places 
of  the  earth,  the  swamps,  and  marshes  and  dis- 
mal fens,  where  slimy  things  crept  and  crawled 
and  hid  in  rank  grass.  Like  some  other  things, 
it  became  rather  grotesque  on  close  inspection,  but 
one  of  Nature's  pet  jokes  all  the  same.  Every 
one,  young  and  old,  laughed  at  the  ridiculous  long 
legs,  and  yet  concealed  in  those  same  stilts,  from 


Wings,  Wings,  Wings  61 

common  observers,  is  a  whole  legal  brief,  going 
far  to  prove  the  adaptation  of  means  to  ends  in 
the  scheme  of  things.  Those  long  legs,  clearly 
intended  for  wading,  would  not  be  of  much  value 
if  not  a  step  could  be  taken  without  a  splash; 
so  that  has  been  provided  for,  and  the  wide- 
spreading  toes  are  carefully  folded  up  by  the 
same  contraction  of  the  muscles  that  raise  the 
foot,  and  are  not  allowed  to  expand  till  the  foot 
is  again  beneath  the  surface  of  the  water,  and 
consequently  there  is  no  splash.  In  spite  of  all 
this,  perhaps  the  frog  is  about  the  only  thing 
that  does  not  regard  the  Crane  as  a  joke. 

4 'They  shall  mount  up  on  wings,  as  Eagles," 
said  the  Prophet  of  God,  foretelling  the  strength 
to  be  the  inheritance  of  the  Redeemed :  and  never 
was  grander  figure  of  speech  used  to  portray 
super-human  might.  The  power  of  flight  reaches 
its  final  triumph  in  the  king  of  the  air;  other 
winged  things  hurl  themselves  through  it,  while 
the  Eagle  alone,  floats  across  fields  of  space 
claiming  lazy  kinship  with  the  passing  cloud. 
Effortless  it  climbs  invisible  spiral  stairs  that  lead 
upward  toward  the  very  temple  of  the  sun  and 
drops  back  to  earth,  held  in  the  secure  embrace 
of  some  dreamy  zephyr.  It  soars  and  seeks  those 
far  altitudes  that  no  eye  hath  reached  and 
through  which  dreams  wander  and  lose  their  way. 
Along  the  rocky  slopes  of  old  Sugar  Loaf,  the 


62       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

small  boy  heard  the  young  Eagles  crying  for  food 
from  a  nest  that  overlooked  lake  and  forest  and 
plain,  and  he  watched  with  never-flagging  interest 
the  old  birds  climbing  the  viewless  ladders  of  the 
sky  and  he  knew,  as  only  those  know  who  have 
never  doubted,  that  when  the  dying  Christian  in 
the  hymn,  cried,  "Lend  me  your  wings,  I  mount, 
I  fly," — his  soul  was  calling  for  the  wings  of  an 
Eagle. 


CHAPTER  VI 

PIRATES 

The  immigrant  of  to-day,  following  the  rail- 
road, knows  little  or  nothing  of  the  privations 
suffered  by  those  of  fifty  years  ago,  who  preceded 
the  railroad  and  in  a  way  were  swallowed  up  by 
the  wilderness.  Many  of  the  early  settlers  of 
Wisconsin  found  themselves  not  only  a  hundred 
miles  away  from  a  market,  but  what  was  almost 
as  bad,  a  hundred  miles  away  from  even  a  weekly 
newspaper,  and  in  some  cases  destitute  of  any- 
thing to  read.  Even  professional  men  carried 
their  libraries  in  saddle-bags  and  any  kind  of  read- 
ing was  prized  like  a  gift  of  the  gods.  The  New 
York  Tribune,  the  New  York  Weekly,  the  New 
York  Ledger,  came  as  angelic  visitors.  As  a 
rule,  no  family  took  more  than  one  of  them  and 
they  were  traded  about  till  they  were  literally 
read  to  fragments,  and  the  fragments  kept  to 
wad  a  gun.  With  regard  to  the  two  last-named 
it  would,  doubtless,  have  been  better  for  the  ris- 
ing generation  had  they  been  used  as  gun  wads 
before  they  were  read  at  all,  for  what  they  offered 

63 


64       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

starving  minds  were  veritable  "apples  of  Sodom." 
They  were  read  by  everybody,  often  read  aloud 
so  they  could  be  quickly  passed  on  to  the  next 
eager  lot  of  readers;  and  their  lurid  pirate  stories 
fixed  themselves  in  the  minds  of  the  juvenile  list- 
eners to  their  very  great  harm.  Perhaps  some  of 
them  never  forgot  them,  and  at  least  one  small 
boy  had  good  reason  to  remember  the  worst  of 
them — if  there  are  degrees  of  iniquity  in  pirate 
stories — all  the  days  of  his  life. 

Captain  Ludlow,  of  "The  Sure  Death,"  was  a 
monster, — capable  of  such  frightful  atrocities  that 
even  the  devil  would  have  done  himself  credit  to 
have  disowned  him  as  a  subject.  There  was  no 
Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde  about  him,  though  at 
times  having  the  mien  of  a  perfect  gentleman,  he 
was  always  consistent,  always  the  fiend  incarnate. 
It  could  never  be  said  of  him  that  he  did  not  care 
a  hang  for  humanity — for  his  ambition  seemed 
to  be  to  hang  the  whole  human  family.  He  had 
a  commendable  pride  in  the  originality  of  his 
treatment  of  captives;  he  had  forced  none  of 
them  to  walk  the  plank — that  was  old-fashioned 
when  he  came  upon  deck — so  all  that  fell  into 
his  hands  had  been  given  their  exit  from  a  world 
of  trouble  through  the  hangman's  noose. 

Of  course  always  excepting  himself  and  his  first 
and  second  mates,  Guzzling  Jack  and  Gorging 
Jimmy,  English  Bone,  a  gaunt  miscreant,  was  a 


Pirates  65 

person  of  great  importance,  for  he  was  hang- 
man, and  that  post  was  no  sinecure  on  "The  Sure 
Death."  If  one  of  the  great  family  newspapers, 
alluded  to  above,  is  to  be  relied  upon,  Captain 
Ludlow,  when  business  was  heavy  and  many  cap- 
tives were  coming  his  way,  was  in  the  habit  of 
taking  a  day  off  and  holding  a  general  hanging 
bee.  On  such  occasions,  the  Captain  of  "The 
Sure  Death"  would  be  present  in  a  semi-official 
character,  invariably  white  duck  trousers,  ruffled 
shirt,  and  scarlet  jacket  and  cap — so  covered  with 
gold  braid  as  to  look  like  the  field  of  the  cloth 
of  gold  in  miniature.  It  almost  goes  without  the 
saying  that  on  such  occasions,  he  puffed  his  cigar, 
in  all  the  bustle,  with  the  bored  expression  of  one 
forced  by  politeness  to  listen  to  a  very  old  story. 
On  such  occasions,  English  Bone,  the  hangman, 
held  the  center  of  the  stage — an  artist  in  his  line, 
— decorating  the  rigging  with  assorted  bodies, 
heavy-weights  below  and  so  on  up,  with  an  infant 
at  the  fore-top  gallant  mast.  It  was  always  quite 
clear  that  in  the  mind  of  the  author,  English 
Bone  had  a  mighty  taking  way  with  him.  On 
more  than  one  occasion  when  his  Captain  was 
bearing  up  manfully  beneath  all  his  gold  lace  on 
deck,  "The  Sure  Death"  hopelessly  becalmed, 
English  Bone  had  strung  up  one  of  the  crew,  just 
to  add  interest  to  a  sunset  at  sea. 

As  the  natural  result  of  this  kind  of  reading, 


66       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

the  woods  adjacent  to  the  settlement  were  full  of 
little  pirates.  On  one  summer  afternoon,  Shanty 
Pete's  crew  had  come  ashore  from  their  water- 
logged flat  boat,  and  the  crew  to  amuse  their 
Captain,  were  staging  one  of  English  Bone's 
hanging  bees.  Captain  Shanty  Pete  stood  about 
minus  the  gold  braid,  but  with  the  cigar  and  the 
bored  look.  Stub  Miner,  with  his  bandy  legs, 
red  hair,  freckled  nose  and  rabbit  mouth  that  was 
ever  agap,  in  no  way  looked  the  part  of  English 
Bone,  the  Sure  Death's  hangman,  but  was 
hungry  for  the  job — and  got  it.  Perhaps  he 
proved  his  fitness  for  so  much  honor  in  the  way 
he  cursed  his  men  for  their  clumsy  efforts  to  erect 
a  gallows,  according  to  his  rather  vague  orders. 
Captain  Shanty  Pete  had  finally  to  come  to  the 
rescue  with  his  profanity  as  it  was  getting  to  be 
a  question  if  his  cigar,  which  had  only  been  what 
is  called  a  snipe  at  the  beginning,  would  last 
through  the  execution.  Guzzling  Jack  and  Gorg- 
ing Jimmy,  i.  e.,  the  two  little  Eaton  boys,  finally 
saluted  and  pronounced  all  things  ready. 

Two  sticks,  with  crotches  at  the  top,  had  been 
driven  into  the  ground  and  into  the  crotches  was 
placed  a  horizontal  bar  and  to  this  were  attached 
the  nooses — five  in  number — made  of  fish  line  and 
about  two  feet  long.  The  trap  was  a  slender 
wand  of  willow  placed  parallel  to  the  bar  above 
and  aboijt  six  inches  below  it,  easily  yanked  out 


Pirates  67 

of  shallow  notches  in  the  uprights.  An  old  jacket 
at  the  foot  of  a  big  white  oak  nearby  held  the 
prisoners.  Stub  Miner,  burlesquing  English 
Bone,  though  he  knew  it  not,  now  proceeded  to 
place  each  captive  in  place  and  adjust  the  noose. 
Merciful  heavens !  They  were  five  young  Golden 
Woodpeckers  nearly  grown  and  as  innocent  and 
helpless  as  any  other  babies.  They  were  clearly 
not  at  all  afraid  and  clung  to  the  fatal  drop  with 
wonderment  in  their  bright  eyes — and  one  of 
them  actually  opened  its  mouth  to  be  fed.  Now 
or  never — if  this  slaughter  of  the  innocent  was 
not  to  take  place — interference  must  come  from 
some  quarter  and  it  so  happened  that  a  certain 
small  boy,  hidden  behind  a  nearby  cedar  and 
fascinated  by  the  horror  of  what  had  been  going 
on  before  his  eyes,  was  selected  as  the  puny  agent 
of  that  mysterious  something  that  we  call  Provi- 
dence. 

When  Shakespeare  wrote  of  mercy  as  a  uni- 
versal quality  that  "droppeth  as  the  gentle  rain 
from  heaven  upon  the  place  beneath,"  he  should 
have  made  an  exception  of  that  flinty  part  of  a 
pirate's  anatomy,  generally  called  a  heart;  for 
all  pirates,  especially  little  ones,  know  nothing 
of  such  softening  influences.  Intuitively,  the 
small  boy  knew  full  well  that  any  plea  for  mercy 
would  not  only  be  denied  but  would  add  zest  to 
the  gang's  orgy  of  cruelty.  Stub  Miner,  as  Eng- 


68       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

lish  Bone,  was  on  the  eve  of  springing  the  drop, 
when  a  kind  of  a  human  catapult  shot  out  from 
behind  the  cedar  and  the  head  of  it  took  him 
exactly  in  the  pit  of  the  stomach,  and  for  a  little 
time,  in  the  beautiful  and  expressive  language  of 
Bret  Hart — "the  subject  of  proceedings  inter- 
ested him  no  more."  Captain  Shanty  Pete  was 
that  spellbound  that  he  "got  his"  before  he  could 
speak  or  move  and  went  down  beside  the  redoubt- 
able English  Bone — equally  limp  and  equally 
drowsy.  The  little  Eatons  in  retreat,  the  small 
boy  was  in  possession  of  the  field  barely  long 
enough  to  release  the  captives,  who  were  too 
young  to  either  walk  or  fly,  when  the  "little 
Eatons"  made  a  grand  rally  and  he  went  down 
before  their  charge  with  both  on  top — and 
Shanty  Pete,  capping  the  climax,  atop  of  the 
struggling  trio.  It's  no  use,  at  this  late  day,  to 
recount  all  the  pirates  did  to  their  helpless  pris- 
oner; sufficient  to  say  that  after  he  was  securely 
bound  with  fish-line,  Stub  Miller  walked  over  him 
and  kicked  him  in  the  face — fortunately  with  bare 
feet. 

The  pirates  now  reorganized  their  hanging 
bee,  first  sending  to  the  boat  for  a  rope  for  the 
land-lubber  who  had  dared  to  interfere  with  their 
sport;  they  would  dispatch  the  bird-captives  first, 
and  then  hang  their  would-be  rescuer  from  the 
white-oak,  close  beside  them,  as  a  horrible  exam- 


Pirates  69 

pic  of  the  fate  of  all  who  attempted  to  interfere 
with  their  royal  sport.  Putting  the  small  boy 
where  he  would  have  to  witness  the  execution, 
they  proceeded  to  once  more  arrange  the  young 
Woodpeckers  on  the  drop,  this  time  successfully 
pulled  from  beneath  them.  They  swung  by  their 
necks,  but  it  was  found  that  their  weight  was  not 
sufficient  to  even  strangle  them  to  death, — much 
less  break  their  necks.  Captain  Shanty  Pete  was 
equal  to  the  occasion;  the  "little  Eatons"  were 
ordered  to  get  five  stones,  each  bigger  than  the 
body  of  the  captive  to  whose  feet  one  was  to  be 
attached,  then  the  hanging  might  proceed — after 
the  fine  model  set  by  the  great  Captain  Ludlow. 
If  the  small  boy  was  really  afraid  of  being  hung, 
he  could  never  afterward  tell  for  certain,  for 
like  the  "Tar  Baby,"  he  was  saying  nothing,  but 
was  alert  and  watchful  as  no  "Tar  Baby"  ever 
was.  Possibly  it  was  on  account  of  being  so 
much  closer  to  the  earth  than  the  rest  that  he  was 
the  first  to  hear  the  approaching  footsteps  of  his 
deliverers. 

Ben  Burroughs  and  Ira  Smith,  two  youths  ap- 
proaching what  Lowell  calls  "the  awful  verge  of 
manhood,"  strolling  along  the  lake,  by  the  merest 
accident,  flanked  the  pirates  and  captured  their 
captain  and  hangman,  before  those  worthies 
knew  their  danger.  Shanty  Peter  fairly  roared 
for  mercy  and  prayed  for  clear  weather  beneath 


yo       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

a  rain  of  cuffs  from  the  strong  hands  of  Long 
Ben,  as  he  was  called.  He  did  not  have  to  be 
told  a  second  time  to  cut  the  bands  that  made 
the  small  boy  a  prisoner  and  being  on  his  knees, 
he  thought  without  suggestion,  of  the  apology, 
of  which  he  made  the  small  boy  the  recipient; 
pronouncing  it  with  something  of  the  unction  of 
a  divinity  student,  practicing  the  "have  mercy 
upon  us,  most  miserable  sinners."  English  Bone, 
in  the  equally  strong  hands  of  his  captor  was  also 
treading  the  thorny  path  of  repentance  and  resti- 
tution. Mid  a  storm  of  "pitchforks  and  coals  of 
fire,"  he  released  his  captives — seemingly  unhurt 
— and  made  five  ascents  of  the  white-oak,  whence 
they  had  been  taken,  to  restore  each  one  to  its 
home  in  the  heart  of  the  oak, — secure  from  all 
enemies  except  young  pirates.  The  "little 
Eatons"  made  good  their  escape  so  it  was  only 
to  Pete  and  Stub  that  the  final  riot  act  was  read, 
mild  yanks  and  cuffs  emphasizing  important  parts. 
They  readily  promised  never  to  play  pirates 
again,  never  to  molest  another  bird's-nest,  and 
to  do  their  utmost  to  break  up  all  other  piratical 
gangs  infesting  the  beautiful  lake  and  the  noble 
forest,  already  set  aside  as  the  site  of  an  institu- 
tion of  learning.  They  were  then  asked  sepa- 
rately and  collectively,  if  they  regarded  them- 
selves as  soundly  converted  and  answering  in  the 
affirmative,  their  captors  led  them  out  to  the 


Pirates  71 

end  of  the  pier — which  was  a  tree  fallen  into  the 
water — to  which  their  boat  was  hitched,  and 
knowing  that  they  could  swim  like  water-rats, 
they  were  solemnly  assured  that  in  the  case  of 
reformed  pirates,  baptism  must  follow  without 
delay,  and  they  were  dropped  into  the  lake.  Wet 
and  shivery  and  thoroughly  humiliated,  as  they 
pulled  their  boat  for  home,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
Captain  Ludlow,  of  "The  Sure  Death,"  and  his 
noble  compatriot,  English  Bone,  seemed  to  them 
what  they  were  in  fact,  the  frightful  monsters  of 
a  frightful  dream. 

That  anything  of  lasting  importance  should 
have  had  its  birth  in  this  scrap  among  five  little 
boys  over  a  brood  of  young  Woodpeckers,  on 
the  face  of  it  is  improbable,  and  yet  the  insig- 
nificant affair  was  not  without  its  life-long  influ- 
ence upon  the  after-life  of  our  small  boy.  He 
had  been  the  rescuer  of  five  young  birds  against 
great  odds  and  these  rescued  birds,  in  a  way, 
sent  him  forth,  with  an  unflagging  determination 
never  to  give  up  the  struggle,  against  all  pos- 
sible odds,  for  the  rescue  of  all  birds  from  their 
human  enemies,  boys  and  men. 

It  was  a  forlorn  little  figure,  with  torn  shirt 
and  bloody  nose,  that  went  limping  home  amid 
the  long  shadows  of  the  afternoon,  not  knowing 
that  the  pirates  and  the  golden  woodpeckers 
together  had  come  very  near  making  a  hero  out 
of  him. 


CHAPTER  VII 

AN  OLD   LOG  THAT  WAS   BEWITCHED 

It  is  said  of  the  bumblebee  that  he  hums  but 
never  sings,  and  it  may  be  said  of  the  Ruffed 
Grouse,  with  equal  truth,  that  he  drums  but  never 
plays  a  tune;  but  his  drumming,  such  as  it  is,  in 
connection  with  the  booming  of  the  Prairie 
Chicken,  constitutes  an  essential  part  of  the  great 
spring  orchestra.  In  the  forest  of  my  early  years, 
the  wandering  minstrel  with  a  drum  was  every- 
where and  nowhere,  silence  quickly  swallowing 
sound  and  vacancy  places  that  seemed  alive.  Not 
only  Wordsworth's  Cuckoo  is  to  be  called  ua  wan- 
dering voice,"  but  the  name  applies  equally  well 
to  a  vast  number  that  we  occasionally  hear  but 
seldom  or  never  see.  In  the  north  woods  on  my 
father's  farm,  by  a  fence  in  a  dense  thicket  was 
an  old  log, — a  prostrate  giant,  whose  bark  had 
crumbled  into  nothingness  and  whose  heart  was 
a  cavernous  chamber  of  black  emptiness. 

Though  it  may  seem  a  far  cry  to  suggest  a 
comparison  between  this  venerable  log  and  the 

72 


An  Old  Log  that  Was  Bewitched        73 

statue  of  Memnon,  that  was  said  from  time  to 
time  to  give  out  a  sound  like  the  breaking  of  a 
harp-string,  it  is  nevertheless  a  fact,  much  bet- 
ter authenticated  than  the  story  of  the  statue, 
that  the  log  was  full  of  uncanny,  mysterious 
sounds  that  saluted  the  dawn  and  at  certain  sea- 
sons of  the  year,  might  be  heard  almost  any  time 
throughout  the  day.  They  did  not  sound  like 
harp-strings,  but  were  clearly  alive  with  a  thrill- 
ing affinity  for  a  boy's  heart-strings.  Poe  opened 
the  door  of  his  chamber  and  in  there  stepped  a 
stately  Raven  of  the  saintly  days  of  yore;  but  a 
thousand  times  I  opened  the  door  of  the  grove 
and  peered  in  to  find  silence  there,  and  nothing 
more.  Silence,  tense  and  inscrutable,  fairly  lay- 
ing the  somnolent  old  log  upon  which  a  woodland 
minstrel  had  stood,  not  two  minutes  before,  mak- 
ing the  welkin  ring,  and  speedily  eloped  with  the 
echoes.  In  those  days,  of  a  May  morning,  you 
might  start  to  run  it  down  and  it  broke  out  behind 
you;  retrace  your  steps  and  you  heard  it  to  the 
right  or  left — clearly  making  a  fool  of  you  in  a 
quest  as  impossible  of  success  as  an  attempt  to 
catch  your  own  shadow. 

It  really  seemed  as  though  no  one  in  the  com- 
munity could  explain  the  mystery  of  the  bewitched 
log,  but  no  one  took  it  seriously  and  laughed  at 
me  as  a  rule,  some  resorting  to  Munchausen  in- 


74       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

vention — common  ways  of  meeting  the  eager  in- 
quiry of  a  child  anxious  to  learn  all  about  things 
in  his  new  world. 

My  parents  were  city  born  and  bred  and  knew 
nothing  of  nature.  Clesen  Smith,  our  neighbor 
on  the  East,  told  me — through  a  great  cloud  of 
tobacco  smoke,  typical  of  a  hazy  state  of  mind — 
that  the  sound  was  made  by  tree-toads,  that  doubt- 
less made  the  old  log  their  home.  Grant  Culver, 
to  the  East,  was  quite  positive  that  the  Fairies 
were  using  the  log  as  a  prison,  for  political  of- 
fenders and  what  I  heard  was  an  awful  warning 
being  given  out  from  time  to  time  by  the  miserable 
captive.  Jerry  Norton,  the  village  liar,  had  three 
possible  explanations.  A  Woodchuck  had  a  den 
under  the  log  and  what  I  heard  was  the  Wood- 
chuck  chucking  wood:  a  Prairie  bull-snake  had 
its  den  in  the  log  and  warned  its  children  by 
pounding  its  tail  on  the  ground  when  it  was  go- 
ing away  to  spend  the  day:  a  Were-wolf  lived  in 
the  log  and  the  explosive  sounds  I  heard  were  its 
gloating  enumerations  of  the  number  of  human 
creatures  it  had  devoured. 

Truth  is  said  to  be  at  the  bottom  of  a  well, 
but  the  explanation  of  mystery  is  often  found 
waiting  you  at  the  side  of  the  road,  at  the  end  of 
a  long  journey.  Only  after  years  of  search  did 
I  find  out  the  true  explanation  of  the  bewitched 
log,  and  witchcraft  was  changed  into  love,  an  even 


An  Old  Log  that  Was  Bewitched        75 

greater  mystery — fed  by  a  million  flames  and 
fanned  by  ten  million  strange  processes.  Back 
in  the  primitive  aeons  of  life,  love  was  fanned  by 
battle,  and  the  female  was  charmed  to  give  her- 
self to  the  victor ;  but  the  day  dawned  when  love 
would  be  fanned  by  elements  quite  remote  from 
physical  force — fancy  being  captured  by  means 
too  occult  to  be  formulated,  or  expressed  if  for- 
mulated; fancy  giving  way  to  interest,  and  inter- 
est giving  birth  to  a  god,  a  goddess,  a  myth, — 
the  one  great  reality  in  a  world  of  shadows. 

We  do  not  always  find  when  we  seek  and  we 
often  stumble  upon  the  thing  for  which  we  had 
long  sought  in  vain.     A  half-domesticated,  half- 
wild  heifer,   recently  purchased  by  my   father, 
escaped  from  the  home  pasture  and  was  thought 
to  be  hiding  a  new-born  calf  somewhere  in  the 
north  woods,  and  on  a  misty  gray  Saturday  morn- 
ing, I  was  the  new  member  of  a  searching  party, 
now  quite  worn  out  by  two  unsuccessful  days  of 
pursuit;  trained  intellect  struggling  with  blind  in- 
stinct.    A   fool  cow   and  calf's  brains   making 
monkeys  of  lords  of  creation.    No  wonder  every- 
one was  out  of  humor  and  my  proffered  assist- 
ance was  lightly  esteemed.       Long  before  day- 
light, with  sundry  pieces  of  venerable  toast — for- 
gotten by  every   one,   and  never-to-be-forgotten 
by  me, — in  my  pocket,  I  took  to  the  woods  and 
probably  would  have  taken  to  my  heels  had  I  run 


76       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

upon  the  black  cow  in  a  thicket  and  in  the  dark- 
ness mistaken  her  for  a  bear,  of  which  I  had  heard 
much  and  seen  little.  It  was  fore-ordained  from 
all  eternity  that  my  way  that  morning  should  take 
me  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  bewitched  log  and 
the  approach  of  bare  feet  over  wet  leaves  and 
grass  must  have  been  as  near  being  shod  with 
silence  as  it  is  ever  possible  to  human  kind,  and  in 
addition  to  this  I  was  approaching  from  the  north- 
east, an  entirely  new  direction,  and  the  very  first 
glimpse  of  the  log  revealed  the  presence  of  some- 
thing new — a  big  bird  standing  upon  it  in  the  atti- 
tude of  a  soldier  on  guard.  We  were  both  wait- 
ing for  something,  and  unless  something  outside 
of  us  intervened,  we  would  have  to  remain  motion- 
less, in  statu  quo,  for  twice  ten  thousand  years — 
and  all  the  time  silence  like  a  mighty,  invisible 
flood  was  rising  higher  and  higher  and  threaten- 
ing to  drown  us.  Help!  Rescue  from  the  un- 
speakable thing  into  which  we  are  sinking!  We 
had  not  noticed  it  before,  but  all  the  time  sugges- 
tion had  been  saying  in  a  soothing  voice,  "sleep, 
sleep,  go  to  sleep."  What  broke  the  spell  was 
the  sun  in  the  east;  the  military  bird  broke  into  a 
wild  gyration  and  emitted  a  torrent  of  sound, 
from  now  on  no  more  mysterious  than  the  break- 
fast bell  at  home.  I  showed  my  approval  like 
Tarn  O'Shanter,  but  my  witch  fled,  a  brown  streak, 
— I  in  pursuit  to  get  an  identifying  look  in  the 


An  Old  Log  that  Was  Bewitched        77 

open — when  not  ten  rods  away  I  stumbled  over 
a  black  calf  that  was  quickly  joined  by  its  mother; 
and  she  and  I  wended  our  way  home,  each  in  pos- 
session of  our  dark  secret. 

There  is  this  singular  thing  about  a  mystery; 
when  you  think  it  all  cleared  up,  the  sun  of  truth 
is  just  beginning  to  break  through  the  clouds  of 
error  and  the  full  noon  is  apt  to  be  hours  away. 
I  had  the  calf  in  the  barn  and  the  cow  in  the 
pasture,  and  had  been  scolded  at  by  my  brothers 
and  praised  by  my  father  before  it  dawned  upon 
me  that  I  did  not  begin  to  know  all  about  the 
crazy  Ruffed  Grouse  yet;  whereas  I  knew  who 
made  the  noise  I  did  not  have  the  ghost  of  an  idea 
as  to  why  he  did  it.  It  required  weary  hours  of 
waiting  and  watching  before  proof,  strong  as 
Holy  Writ,  established  his  claim  to  being  the  most 
poetic  of  woodland  minstrels  beneath  the  window 
of  the  female  of  the  species — the  surrounding 
hills,  her  castle  walls,  and  his  loud  lament,  a 
woeful  ballad  to  his  mistress'  eye-brow. 

Let  no  man  say,  "Oh,  vanity,  thy  name  is 
woman,"  for  man  who  has  the  first  right  to  about 
everything  has  first  claim  to  vanity  as  well.  Mrs. 
Peacock,  Mrs.  Gobler  and  Mrs.  Ruffed  Grouse 
must  have  a  certain  amount  of  contempt  for  their 
silly  husbands,  always  on  dress  parade,  always 
trying  to  show  off  and  attract  attention.  Especially 
is  Mr.  Ruffed  Grouse's  attempt  to  drum  up  ad- 


78       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

mirers  little  short  of  disgusting.  With  him,  every 
year  is  leap  year  and  the  drumming  is  to  give 
notice  that  he  is  at  home  and  ready  to  receive 
proposals  of  marriage  from  eligible  spinsters  and 
attractive  widows.  Love  is  certainly  blind,  or  no 
self-respecting  female  would  fall  in  love  with  this 
Jumping-Jack,  with  a  fog-horn  attachment.  Per- 
haps they  finally  marry  him  to  stop  his  noise,  but 
if  such  is  the  case  the  sacrifice  is  useless,  for  the 
noisy  lover  makes  a  noisy  husband,  just  as  a 
drunken  lover  makes  a  drunken  husband.  Much 
has  been  written  and  said  against  vanity,  but 
seriously  it  is  something  of  a  question  if  it  may 
not  be  a  virtue  masquerading  as  a  vice.  Making 
the  most  of  what  has  been  given  you  by  Mother 
Nature  isn't  so  bad,  always  trying  to  look  your 
best  cannot  be  condemned,  and  trying  to  make  all 
the  world  love  you  suggests  the  golden  rule  in 
a  party  dress.  If  vanity  is  the  detestable  vice 
we  have  been  taught  to  think  it,  then  it  follows  as 
the  night  the  day  that  Mr.  Peacock,  Mr.  Gobbler 
and  Mr.  Ruffed  Grouse  will  prove  to  be  especially 
bad  husbands,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  quite  the 
reverse  is  the  real  state  of  the  case.  Mr.  Gobbler, 
so  prominent  and  respected  on  Thanksgiving  oc- 
casions, is  a  perfect  model  of  conjugal  devotion, 
willingly  taking  upon  himself  fully  one-half  of  all 
domestic  duties  and  such  a  perfect  under-study 
of  his  better  half  that  if  any  calamity  happens 


An  Old  Log  that  Was  Bewitched        79 

to  her,  domestic  matters  go  along  without  a  skip 
or  a  break.  With  regard  to  Mr.  Peacock,  I  could 
a  tale  unfold,  but  that  is  another  story.  There 
is  a  great  deal  to  be  heard  about  the  private  life 
of  Mr.  Ruffed  Grouse,  but  one  cannot  and  should 
not  believe  all  they  hear  and  nothing  has  been 
proven  against  him  that  would  make  it  impossible 
to  put  on  his  tomb-stone  the  usual  statement  that 
he  was  a  good  neighbor,  a  devoted  husband,  and  a 
kind  father. 

I  am  willing  to  bear  testimony  as  to  the  good 
character  of  the  vain  fellow  who  had  me  and  the 
old  log  bewitched.  Though  our  acquaintance 
never  could  have  been  termed  intimate,  I  entered 
into  the  family's  joys  and  sorrows  to  some  extent. 
I  was  not  invited  to  the  wedding,  but  happened 
along,  so  to  speak,  at  the  christening.  A  fine 
family,  John  Roger  family,  and  when  the  little 
ones  most  needed  a  mother — a  two  or  a  four- 
legged  wolf  got  her — and  the  bereaved  husband 
became  the  devoted  father,  bringing  each  and  all 
up  in  the  way  they  should  go,  and  never  once  try- 
ing to  drum  up  admirers, — I  even  found  him  shy 
of  praise. 

He  loves  wilderness  ways  and  his  home  is  the 
forest;  his  little  journey  in  the  world  is  to  visit 
the  clearing  and  we  love  to  see  him  along  high- 
ways that  we  may  kill  him  on  sight.  Among 
wood-folk  we  always  think  of  him  as  an  alert 


8o       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

business  fellow  and  that  leads  to  the  fancy  that 
he  may  be  a  commercial  traveler  undergoing  a 
Ruffed  Grouse  re-incarnation. 

I  remember  very  distinctly  how  the  forest  had 
been  adding  tinsel  to  the  fading  colors  of  October 
that  somber  Sunday  morning  when  I  rushed  out 
into  the  open,  beyond  the  north  edge  of  the  North 
Woods,  for  some  explanation  of  the  barking  of 
a  dog  and  the  sound  of  guns  in  a  woods  to  the 
west,  a  half  a  mile  away.  To  many,  what  was 
taking  place  would  have  been  as  difficult  of  inter- 
pretation as  a  forgotten  dream,  but  to  me  it  was 
all  horribly  distinct,  to  its  last  minutiae.  The 
Ruffed  Grouse,  this  bird  of  mystery,  whose  drum- 
ming has  bewitched  many  a  boy,  is  himself  be- 
witched by  the  barking  of  a  dog  under  a  tree,  in 
which  he  has  taken  refuge ;  and  a  whole  flock  may 
be  shot  by  gunners  in  full  sight,  if  they  shoot  the 
birds  on  the  lower  branches  first,  without  a  single 
one  attempting  to  escape  by  flight.  Bitterly  pro- 
testing, but  so  far  away  that  I  was  as  helpless  as 
a  man  in  a  dream,  I  could  do  nothing  but  curse, 
for  to  me  it  was  a  foregone  conclusion  that  these 
fine  sportsmen  were,  as  leisurely  as  they  might 
pick  apples,  killing  my  Magician  and  his  entire 
family.  Dog  and  followers  (at  least  one  of  them 
a  mongrel),  had  disappeared  before  I  reached 
the  corner  of  the  fence  where  the  murder,  most 


An  Old  Log  that  Was  Bewitched        81 

foul,  had  taken  place.  At  first  I  thought  nothing 
was  to  be  seen  but  tramped  and  bloody  grass  and 
leaves,  but  a  second  examination  revealed  a  bloody 
trail  leading  into  a  nearby  tangle  of  berry  bushes, 
— which  pursued,  led  to  a  dead  bird  and  also  to 
the  certainty  that  the  gunners  had  left  in  a  hurry, 
for  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Covey  had 
been  overlooked.  He  had  been  so  full  of  life 
and  now  how  dead  he  was,  how  inert — this  week 
a  watchful  father,  next  week  a  bit  of  carrion, 
harmless  and  even  beneficent  in  the  scheme  of 
Nature,  and  killed,  really  not  for  food,  but  for 
sport.  Perhaps  some  old  Brahmin  rose  up  in 
me  and  my  very  soul  was  filled  with  loathing  at 
the  thought  of  taking  life  except  as  a  stern  neces- 
sity. I  remember  thinking  so  long  as  he  had 
been  killed  for  sport,  no  one  should  eat  him,  so 
I  carried  him  back  and  hid  his  body  in  the  hollow 
log  where  I  had  seen  him  first  and  rolled  a  heap 
of  stones  to  the  door  of  his  fitting  sepulcher. 

I  took  my  little  grand-daughter  last  May  to  see 
the  place  and  found  only  the  stones  remaining, — 
more  magic, — the  old  log  had  turned  into  a  bank 
of  violets.  While  the  little  child  filled  her  chubby 
hands  with  Nature's  blue  dearlings,  I  said  aloud : 
"Nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet,  not  one  life 
shall  be  destroyed  or  cast  as  rubbish  on  the  void, 
when  God  shall  make  the  pile  complete."  She 


82       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

turned  and  faced  me,  and  said:  "What  are  you 
saying,  Grand-daddy?"  and  in  reply  I  could  but 
say:  "I  don't  think  I  can  make  you  understand, 
Little  One,  for  I  don't  think  I  could  make  any- 
one understand." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

NOTHING   SO   SILLY  AS   A   GOOSE 

It  was  all  in  the  merry  month  of  May,  when 
the  south  wind  is  virile,  and  life  everywhere  fol- 
lows its  fleeting  kisses,  that  the  "Cathrine"  left 
its  pier  with  a  merry  little  company  on  board  to 
make  the  tour  around  one  of  Wisconsin's  many 
beautiful  lakes.  The  steamer  was  chartered  and 
the  sole  object  in  view  was  pleasure,  but  he  who 
goes  after  pleasure  often  finds,  as  did  this  com- 
pany of  merry-makers,  that  the  whole  expedition 
was  from  first  to  last,  a  "Wild  Goose  chase."  In 
Pine  Bay,  on  the  south  side,  a  Canadian  Wild 
Goose  was  sighted,  within  the  deep  shadows  of 
that  rocky  shore,  and  as  they  had  practically 
ceased  to  be  migrants  at  so  late  a  date  in  the  year, 
and  as  they  never  make  their  long  journey  to  the 
far  north  in  solitary  state,  it  went  without  the  say- 
ing that  the  lonely  bird  was  there  for  the  excellent 
reason  that  it  could  not  fly  and  such,  indeed, 
proved  to  be  the  case.  Silly  Goose  that  it  was, 
it  still  had  power  to  divide  that  jocund  company; 
the  vast  majority  thirsted  for  its  blood  and  longed 

83 


84       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

for  a  gun;  a  respectable  minority  admired  its 
grace  and  alertness  and  one  man  among  them  all, 
and  as  it  happened  the  host,  determined  to  cap- 
ture it,  mend  its  broken  wing,  and  in  the  fall 
migration,  allow  it,  if  it  so  willed,  to  go  south 
among  its  fellows. 

No  trick,  you  doubtless  fancy,  for  two  stalwart 
young  men  in  a  boat  with  a  good  landing  net, 
with  a  handle  six  feet  long,  to  pick  it  up  from 
the  water.  If  you  have  been  entertaining  such  a 
notion  of  the  silliness  of  a  Goose  it  would  have 
been  a  surprising  experience  to  have  been  one 
of  the  company  on  as  astonishing  a  Wild  Goose 
chase  as  has  been  pulled  off  in  many  a  day.  After 
an  hour  of  valiant  pursuit  and  most  ignominious 
failure,  a  vote  was  taken  whether  to  continue  the 
trip  or  the  chase;  if  the  first  proposition  prevailed, 
each  one  would  have  to  pocket  the  mortification 
of  having  been  bested  by  a  Goose.  So  we  all 
stood  pat  and  now  belong  to  that  respectable 
minority,  who  going  on  a  "Wild  Goose  chase" 
return  with  rejoicing,  bringing  their  bird  with 
them.  So  far  the  pursuit  had  been  so  fast  and 
furious  that  no  one  had  been  taxing  his  gray 
matter  to  any  great  extent,  but  the  little  voting 
intermission  had  put  us  in  a  judicial  frame  of 
mind  and  we  shouted  our  collective  wisdom  like 
a  well-drilled  class  in  the  A  grade:  "She  doubles 


Nothing  so  Silly  as  a  Goose  85 

like  a  Hare;  pursue  with  the  steamer  and  that 
will  give  the  men  in  the  boat  a  chance." 

Her  undoing  was  in  the  discovery  of  her  tactics. 
Like  Pat  and  the  Flea,  when  the  men  picked  her 
up  she  was  not  there  and  reappeared  rods  away, 
floating  to  the  surface,  with  neck  stretched  along 
the  surface  of  the  water,  looking  not  unlike  drift- 
ing sea-weed.  Why  had  we  not  noticed  that  she 
always  doubled  back?  We  are  only  saved  from 
dying  of  mortification  by  the  fact  that  doughty 
Colonel  H.,  direct  from  Washington,  who  took 
full  command  in  the  absence  of  our  captain,  in 
the  rescue  party,  shouting  wise  saws  and  modern 
instances,  also  failed  to  notice  that  "she  doubled 
like  a  Hare."  The  length  of  her  swim  under 
water  was  limited  by  the  time  she  could  get  along 
without  breathing,  and  when  she  came  up  beside 
the  rowboat,  she  allowed  herself  to  be  gathered 
in  without  a  struggle.  I  took  her  from  Jim,  our 
mighty  hunter,  and  tied  her  legs  with  my  pocket- 
handkerchief  and  she  lay  at  my  feet  upon  the 
deck,  still  without  a  struggle,  biding  her  time. 

Half  the  pleasure  of  hunting  is  showing  off  the 
result  of  the  chase  to  jealous  enemies  and  admir- 
ing friends  alike,  and  on  my  return  to  the  hotel 
I  put  my  Goose  down  upon  the  lawn  that  every- 
one might  have  a  chance  to  admire  us.  Quick  as 
a  flash,  the  time  she  had  been  biding,  arrived, 


86       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

and  she  was  using  fettered  feet  and  her  one  sound 
wing  in  a  burst  of  speed  in  the  direction  of  the 
lake.  That  it  took  so  many  to  capture  her,  dis- 
abled as  she  was,  came  like  a  secret  little  revela- 
tion along  the  line  of  kinship,  which  as  no  one 
mentioned  it,  rather  increased  our  interest  and 
affection  for  the  creature  that  had  such  good 
cause  to  distrust  man's  tender  mercies. 

You'll  not  be  interested  in  the  modern  surgery 
upon  the  compound,  comminuted  fracture  beyond 
the  fact  that  a  perfect  result  was  obtained  and 
the  Goose  paid  the  M.  D.  his  fee,  day  by  day, 
as  the  case  progressed.  She  received  his  min- 
istrations without  wincing,  fighting,  or  apparent 
gratitude,  and  in  every  way  proved  a  beautiful 
patient.  After  a  more  or  less  intimate  acquaint- 
ance extending  over  several  months,  her  physician 
felt  as  ignorant  of  much  that  pertained  to  her 
as  Horace  Smith  confesses  to  have  felt  in  the 
presence  of  the  mummy.  He  knew  her  race,  but 
neither  her  age  nor  station,  and  the  question  of 
sex  proved  utterly  baffling.  The  baptismal  name 
given  was  that  of  Canada,  from  a  notion  that 
the  captive  might  owe  allegiance  to  that  far 
off  Dominion.  Once  a  week  its  attendant  put  the 
crockery  crate,  its  prison-house,  upon  a  wheel- 
barrow and  took  prison  and  captive  to  the  lake 
for  a  swim.  For  the  first  few  times  when  it 
found  itself  in  its  native  element  it  made  a  des- 


Nothing  so  Silly  as  a  Goose  87 

perate  effort  to  escape,  diving  to  the  bottom  and 
beating  the  water  into  spray,  then  it  gave  it  up  as 
useless  and  never  afterward  repeated  its  struggle 
for  liberty  until  that  coveted  possession  came 
almost  by  itself.  When  it  was  clearly  convales- 
cent, and  might  have  been  sent  home  had  it  been 
a  real  patient  in  a  hospital,  the  fracture  having 
knit  and  all  appliances  removed,  its  medical  at- 
tendant had  a  little  yard  built  for  it,  half  of  which 
was  in  the  lake  and  half  on  the  shore,  but  no  top 
was  put  over  the  four-foot  wire  fencing  that  made 
up  the  enclosure  as  it  was  a  question  if  that  was 
necessary  in  order  to  keep  Canada  in  the  United 
States.  If  Canada  felt  any  gratitude  for  the 
treatment  it  was  receiving  its  monarchial  pride 
may  have  had  something  to  do  with  the  fact  that 
it  failed  to  mention  it. 

The  silence,  dignity  and  utter  loneliness  of  its 
personality  was  not  to  be  borne  and  its  keeper, 
hearing  of  a  celebrated  domestic  Goose  raised 
by  hand,  like  Pip,  in  "Great  Expectations,"  and 
christened  "Bildad"  in  his  downy  youth,  lost  no 
time  in  purchasing  the  same  to  act  as  guide,  phil- 
osopher and  friend  of  the  mysterious  Canada. 
Bildad  was  gorgonized  with  a  stony  British  stare 
and  the  Dominion  would  have  none  of  him.  Then 
a  Mrs.  Goose  was  selected  from  Goose  masses 
and  put  between  the  possible  rivals,  but  Canada 
watched  their  betrothal  with  all  the  dignity  that 


88       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

stamps  the  caste  of  Vere  de  Vere.  They  were 
three  in  a  pen  but  not  three  of  a  kind,  and  though 
Canada  did  not  seem  conscious  of  their  existence, 
there  is  some  limit  to  what  can  be  expected  of 
good  breeding  and  it  may  allowably  escape  what 
has  become  unendurable.  Canada  escaped  from 
Bildad  and  his  silly  Goose  of  a  wife.  Knowing 
the  difficulty  of  holding  such  opposite  elements 
together,  I  was  not  greatly  surprised  and  told 
the  man  to  release  the  other  two  Geese,  but  to 
make  no  attempt  to  recapture  Canada. 

Now  came  a  great  surprise,  we  being  thor- 
oughly convinced  that  Minerva  should  have  had  a 
Wild  Goose — wild,  mind  you — instead  of  an  owl 
as  emblematical  of  Wisdom,  and  having  been 
taught  to  believe  that  the  distance  between  Cap- 
tivity and  Freedom  is  a  million  times  the  length 
of  the  road  between  here  and  Tipperary,  I 
found  myself  nonplused,  dumbfounded  when  con- 
fronted by  Canada  strolling  about  the  lawn  quite 
to  the  manor  born  and  just  as  though  nothing 
had  happened.  She  finally  took  up  a  position 
on  the  public  road,  three  feet  from  the  wagon 
track  and  not  only  rested  her  plump  breast  upon 
good  old  Mother  Earth  but  put  her  confiding  head 
under  her  wing  and  pretended  to  be  asleep.  Lobo, 
a  curious  Collie  puppy,  saw  nothing  feigned  in 
her  attitude  and  attempting  a  close  acquaintance 
found  her  cruelly  wide  awake  and  endowed  with 


Nothing  so  Silly  as  a  Goose  89 

the  power  of  driving  all  thoughts  of  slumber  from 
his  universe.  Lobo  got  his  early,  I  mine  later 
when  it  was  borne  in  upon  me  that  in  the  mind  of 
at  least  one  Goose  there  was  only  one  man  in 
the  Universe  and  I  was  it.  Every  day  she  came 
to  the  hotel  office  door  for  the  one  man  to  feed 
her  corn,  other  humans  showered  her  with  it  but 
they  might  as  well  have  thrown  gravel  stones. 
She  did  not  run,  she  simply  walked  away,  leaving 
every  kernel.  On  moon-light  nights,  I  often  en- 
tertained a  little  audience  by  calling  her  in  from 
a  few  rods  out  in  the  lake — she  never  went  ten 
rods  from  home — and  throwing  corn  into  the 
water  where  she  would  dive  for  each  individual 
kernel.  Queer,  isn't  it,  that  whereas  she  could 
scarcely  have  tasted  corn  before  her  capture,  she 
should  have  become  so  much  more  fond  of  it 
than  Bildad  and  his  Goose  of  a  wife.  It  is  some- 
times arrogantly  asserted  that  domesticated  crea- 
tures have  acquired  at  least  a  part  of  their  wis- 
dom from  contact  with  man,  while  quite  the 
reverse  is  true.  Bildad  was  the  heir  of  all  the 
ages  of  domesticated  Goosedom;  Canada,  direct 
from  the  wild,  had  forgotten  a  thousand  times 
more  than  he  ever  knew.  Comparing  the  two, 
Canada  was  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar;  Bildad, 
a  loafer  and  a  grown-up  gosling.  One  was  an 
astronomer,  a  World  Voyager;  the  other,  a  rich 
collection  of  untried-out  Goose  oil.  How  Canada 


90       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

had  fought  for  her  life,  and  on  the  other  hand 
you  can  imagine  Bildad  going  to  sleep  with  his 
head  resting  across  a  chopping  block.  If  that 
old  story  has  any  foundation  in  fact,  it  is  my 
belief  that  it  was  a  Wild  Goose  that  saved  Rome. 

It  is  impossible  to  go  into  all  her  little  ways 
through  which  she  captivated  my  imagination,  but 
take  her  for  all  in  all,  she  was  one  of  my  most 
interesting  patients  from  the  wild.  Here  was 
the  omnipresent  speculation  with  regard  to  her: 
when  fall  came  with  countless  numbers  of  her 
migrating  kind,  would  her  instinct  be  too  strong 
for  her  local  attachment?  Vain  speculation;  the 
question  never  was  settled.  At  dawn  on  the  first 
day  of  "the  open  season,"  when  our  vanishing 
wild  life  may  be  slaughtered  according  to  law,  a 
drunken  young  hoodlum,  from  a  neighboring 
town,  shot  Canada  on  the  beach  in  front  of  the 
hotel.  It  was  one  of  those  little  occurrences  to 
be  met  with  in  life,  when  expression  is  apt  to  be 
of  a  character  that  would  make  its  publication 
more  or  less  of  an  indiscretion. 

During  all  the  days  of  her  brief  sojourn  with 
us,  Canada  had  never  uttered  a  sound  and  for  a 
long  time  this  very  fact  associated  her  with  all 
silent  places.  In  the  spring  when  we  watched 
the  flocks  going  north,  when  they  finally  melted 
into  space  and  their  last  sound  became  inaudible, 


Nothing  so  Silly  as  a  Goose  91 

then  occasionally  the  wrath  of  Canada  would  float 
along  the  passing  shadow  of  something  that  was, 
and  is  not. 

The  Glenn  County  Club,  in  California,  enter- 
tained two  sportsmen? — God  save  the  mark — 
for  a  day's  shooting.     They  went  out  where  a 
wire  fence  held  captive  Canadian  Geese,  used  as 
living  decoys.     On  each  side  were  "rifle-pits"  for 
the  killers — not  hunters — and  back  of  them  an- 
other  for   the   "guide,"   who   could  imitate   the 
"honk"  of  a  Wild  Goose.     In  one  hour,  with  their 
automatic  shotguns,  they  had  used  up  all  their 
ammunition  and,  the  account  says,  had  to  their 
credit — let  us   say  discredit — *wo   hundred   and 
eighteen   dead  birds.      They  went  back   in  the 
afternoon  and  killed  enough  more  to  bring  the 
number  of  the  slaughtered  up  to  four  hundred 
and  fifty.     This  in  America,  in  the  name  of  Sport ; 
we  the  people  who  are  "the  heirs  of  all  the  ages 
in  the  foremost  ranks  of  Time" — still  capable  of 
a  thing  like  that,  and  what  is  even  more  hideous, 
bragging  over  it  and  calling  it  glorious.     No  pair 
of  crawling  reptiles,  or  fierce,  four-footed  beasts, 
in  the  darkest  jungle  that  ever  existed  in  the  re- 
motest parts  of  this  earth,  have  equaled  this  de- 
struction of  harmless  creatures,  from  a  mere  lust 
to  kill.     Establish  their  right  to  be  called  "Pot- 
hunters" and  you  honor  them,  for  comparatively, 


92       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

in  an  ethical  point  of  view,  the  "Pot-hunter"  is  a 
Prince  and  a  King,  when  lined  up  with  the  mere 
KILLER,  who  does  it  for  fun. 

Let  us  suppose  that  yonder,  beneath  some 
mighty  dome,  is  hung  a  splendid  canvas — Art 
holding  Beauty  captive — and  they  together,  tell- 
ing the  story  of  heroic  deeds.  Across  the  face  of 
even  such  a  painting,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  hang  a 
picture  of  Autumn — a  word  painting  from  a  fa- 
miliar poem — asking  you  to  look  at  mine,  instead 
of  the  triumph  of  Art  that  it  but  half  conceals. 

"A  haze  on  the  far  horizon, 
The  infinite,  tender  sky, 
The  ripe,  rich  tint  of  the  corn-fields, 
And  the  wild  Geese  sailing  high, — 
And  all  over  upland  and  lowland 
The  charm  of  the  goldenrod, — 
Some  of  us  call  it  Autumn, 
And  others  call  it  God." 

This  is  as  sweet  and  tender  as  the  Dawn;  here 
we  find  Hope  and  Fruition  hand  in  hand — a 
golden  fancy  mixing  the  pigments  and  an  infinite 
hand  wielding  the  brush.  Autumn  is  its  own 
artist;  October,  as  a  painter,  shaming  the  old 
masters  by  producing  only  perfection.  The  pic- 
ture would  be  incomplete,  imperfect  were  it  not 
for  the  indispensable  element  of  life  supplied  by 
the  flock  of  birds  sailing  across  the  sky.  Their 
mystic  V  is  emblematical  of  splendid  victory 


Nothing  so  Silly  as  a  Goose  93 

over  terrestrial  conditions,  and  its  lesson  to  us, 
the  Earth-born,  is  to  hope  on,  hope  ever.  They 
are  the  weird  musicians  of  the  temple  of  the  sky, 
across  the  day,  beyond  the  night;  we,  strangers 
and  pilgrims,  hear  their  voices  calling,  as  they  fly, 
of  the  better  country  far  away. 

Oh!  ye  poor  sportsmen  of  the  automatic  gun 
and  the  living  decoy, — know  ye  not  that  ye  are 
robbing  God's  great  picture  of  life, — His  finished 
picture  of  the  finished  year? 

On  a  wild  March  morning,  before  dawn,  the 
writer  of  this  little  sketch  seemed  to  be  sinking 
into  his  last  sleep, — the  doctors  had  announced 
that  they  could  do  no  more,  members  of  the  fam- 
ily despairing,  and  the  nurses  at  their  wit's  end, — 
when  suddenly  just  over  the  house  came  the  clamor 
of  a  passing  flock  of  Wild  Geese.  The  familiar 
sounds  roused  the  one  who  was  so  near  crossing 
the  bar,  and  turning  on  his  pillow,  he  cried  faintly: 
uBless  you,  oh!  God  bless  you!"  and  at  once 
started  in  to  fight  his  way  back  to  life  again. 


CHAPTER  IX 

A   DISH    OF   ROBINS 

It  has  always  been  rather  a  matter  of  regret 
to  me  that  we  have  to  journey  along  to  the  middle 
of  the  alphabet  to  get  the  first  letter  in  the  name 
Robin.  The  bird  thus  designated  should  have 
been  given  a  name  commencing  with  the  first 
letter  of  the  alphabet  for  the  excellent  reason  that, 
in  the  order  of  time,  he  comes  first  in  our  acquaint- 
ance with  our  bird  neighbors.  I  have  never  known, 
in  the  North,  a  single  individual  who  will  not  put 
him  first  in  his  identification  of  birds,  and  even 
in  the  South,  in  this  respect,  I  rather  think  he 
scores  over  the  ubiquitous  Mocking  Bird.  He 
practically  is  the  outer  guard  to  the  bird  king- 
dom and  later  on  a  royal  conductor  into  the 
inner  shrine,  for  a  person  who  does  not  know  a 
Robin,  does  not  know  a  thing  of  any  bird,  and 
the  person  who  knows  a  Robin  well,  as  a  rule 
knows  a  whole  lot  about  a  lot  of  other  birds. 
This  will  not  seem  strange  when  we  call  to  mind 
the  fact  that  Cock  Robin  is  not  only  a  splendid 
teacher  of  chart  classes,  but  gets  himself  talked 

94 


A  Dish  of  Robins  95 

about  to  nearly  all  the  little  people  before  they 
are  out  of  their  long  dresses  and  they  know  about 
his  need  of  stockings  and  shoes  before  they  have 
any  of  their  own,  and  romance  is  born  when  some 
inspired  person,  with  his  woeful  history  of  Cock 
Robin  and  Jenny  Wren  at  his  command,  leads 
uncertain  little  footsteps  through  the  thrilling 
days  of  courtship,  merciless  disaster  and  death 
and  sad  obsequies  through  which  the  Dove  can 
actually  be  heard  mourning  for  some  one  else's 
love. 

"John  O'  Mountains"  found  a  dandelion  and  a 
Robin  very  much  at  home  on  a  glacier  in  Alaska, 
and  Cock  Robin  is  a  dandelion  among  birds,  will- 
ing to  make  himself  at  home  just  about  every- 
where, if  you  will  please  keep  him  out  of  your 
pot-pies.  From  the  savannahs  and  jungles  of  the 
tropics  to  beyond  the  tree-line  in  the  far  North, 
he  adopts  all  countries  and  climes  and  what  he 
whistles  at  sunset  is  what  he  whistled  at  dawn: 
"My  country,  'tis  of  thee,  sweet  land  of  liberty, 
of  thee  I  sing."  Then  again  he  is  a  very  common 
unit  of  measure,  to  people  generally,  most  birds 
being  either  larger  or  smaller  than  a  Robin. 

From  her  knowledge  of  his  splendid  appetite 
it  almost  looks  as  though  Mother  Goose  might 
have  entertained  him  at  a  church  supper  or  had 
him  spend  a  summer  vacation  with  her.  Let  me 
see,  what  was  it  she  said  of  his  ability  as  a  trencher 


96       What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

man?  uHe  could  eat  more  victuals  than  three 
score  men,  a  church  and  a  steeple  and  all  the  good 
people  and  yet  his  belly  wasn't  half  full." 

Once  when  I  was  calling  professionally  on  a 
sick  lad,  his  mother  stopped  in  a  half-apologetic 
manner  to  consult  me  about  a  sick  bird  they  had 
in  the  house — a  wild  bird  picked  up  on  the  lawn 
two  days  before.  After  the  manner  of  doctors, 
I  declined  to  give  a  diagnosis  till  I  had  an  oppor- 
tunity to  examine  my  prospective  patient;  but 
when  I  saw  her  coming  with  a  Robin  in  her  hand, 
I  knew  at  once  that  what  ailed  this  patient  was 
just  the  opposite  to  what  ailed  her  gorged  little 
boy,  the  bird  was  starving.  Evidently,  the  good 
lady's  education  had  not  included  Mother  Goose 
or  she  would  not  have  entertained  the  notion  that 
on  a  diet  of  two  horse-flies  and  one  angle-worm, 
in  two  days,  the  case  was  likely  one  of  indigestion. 
Again  after  the  manner  of  my  calling,  I  said: 
"This  is  a  fatal  case,  you  should  have  called  me 
earlier,  very  sad,  very  sad,  for  in  a  land  of  plenty, 
it  is  simple  starvation.  A  hundred  horse-flies  one 
day  and  a  hundred  angle-worms  the  next,  might 
have  carried  him  along  until  he  was  old  enough 
to  go  to  church  alone  and  look  after  himself."  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  a  growing  young  Robin  requires 
more  than  its  own  weight  of  food  daily.  You 
who  live  across  the  street  or  in  the  next  house 
to  a  girl  who  practices  on  the  piano  five  hours 


A  Dish  of  Robins  97 

a  day,  may  thank  your  lucky  stars  that  kind 
Mother  Nature  did  not  crucify  you  with  a  sense 
of  hearing  exaggerated  into  an  acuteness  that  en- 
ables him  to  locate  the  movement  of  a  worm  under 
ground  two  yards  away.  It  seems  unconditional 
surrender  upon  the  part  of  the  worm  when  Mr. 
Robin  comes  calling,  but  he  gives  up  the  ghost 
to  the  fisherman  only  after  a  struggle,  and  what 
is  worse,  often  in  a  niggardly  half-a-loaf  fashion. 
W.  H.  Hudson,  the  famous  English  naturalist, 
has  a  book  whose  title  is  "Birds  and  Man,"  as 
though  they  were  inseparable,  but  as  a  matter  of 
fact  there  is  only  one  bird  inseparably  associated 
with  man,  and  that  is  the  Robin.  He  can't  get 
too  close,  and  if  given  the  slightest  chance  does 
courting,  builds  his  nest,  and  rears  his  family  by 
preference  under  the  veranda  where  human  crea- 
tures pass  at  all  hours  of  the  day,  and  cats  prowl 
at  all  hours  of  the  night.  In  Mr.  Hudson's  book, 
to  which  I  have  just  referred,  he  tells  the  story 
of  an  Owl,  reared  in  captivity  and  without  fear  of 
man.  So  confiding  was  it,  that  coming,  like  all 
Owls  on  noiseless  wing,  it  would  light  on  the 
shoulder  of  any  human  creature  who  might  hap- 
pen along  in  the  night.  Some  one,  supposing 
himself  attacked,  struck  it  to  the  ground  and 
broke  its  wing  with  a  club.  It  survived  its  injury, 
but  its  confidence  in  man  was  at  an  end  and  it 
grew  wilder  and  wilder  until  it  finally  returned  to 


98       What  Birds  Have  Done  Wilh  Me 

its  native  forest,  as  wild  or  wilder  than  any  of 
its  kind. 

The  Apostle  Paul's  narration  of  having  been 
scourged,  beaten  with  rods,  and  made  to  fight 
with  beasts  at  Ephesus,  tragic  history  though  it 
be,  still  does  not  give  him  a  place  among  martyrs 
to  be  compared  to  the  high  perch  that  the  demure 
and  cheerful  Robin-Redbreast,  that  you  see  on 
your  lawn,  of  a  summer  morning,  has  earned  for 
himself.  In  very  fact,  he  dies  daily  as  the  re- 
sult of  ignorant  persecution, — Hunnish,  ruthless 
slaughter. 

With  the  single  exception  of  the  remediless 
slaughter  of  the  Passenger  Pigeon,  no  other  fam- 
ily of  birds  has  suffered  what  the  Robin  has  and 
still  survives.  He  is,  always  excepting  the  Chick- 
adee, the  optimist  of  the  bird  kingdom,  jolly  under 
the  buffeting  of  March  winds  and  rollicking 
through  adverse  conditions  that  would  justify  the 
grouch  of  grouches.  For  unknown  ages  half  the 
Robin's  life  has  been  spent  in  that  part  of  this 
country,  known  since  its  settlement  as  the  South- 
ern States  and,  since  the  coming  of  the  white  man, 
the  birds'  Inferno — a  St.  Bartholomew  of  birds 
generally  speaking,  but  a  veritable  slaughter-house 
for  this  winter  resident  in  particular. 

It  is  with  shame  and  humiliation  that  I  append 
the  following  indictment  against  my  brother  man, 
and  the  president  of  the  Grand  Jury  is  no  less  a 


A  Dish  of  Robins  99 

person  than  T.  Gilbert  Pearson,  Secretary  of  the 
National  Association  of  Audubon  Societies : 

"Robins  in  winter  sometimes  congregate  by 
thousands  to  roost  at  a  favorite  spot,  and  here 
the  hunters  often  come  to  take  them,  in  the  man- 
ner, Audubon  tells  us,  people  took  the  Wild  Pig- 
eons during  the  last  century.  Stories  of  their 
killing  creep  into  the  public  press,  and  over  their 
coffee  men  marvel  at  the  slaughter  of  birds  that 
goes  on,  sometimes  in  their  immediate  neighbor- 
hood. Here  is  an  authentic  account  of  the  raid- 
ing of  one  such  roost,  given  the  writer  by  Dr. 
P.  P.  Claxton,  of  the  University  of  Tennessee. 
He  was  familiar  with  many  of  the  details,  and 
will  vouch  for  the  truthfulness  of  the  facts  here 
set  forth.  He  says :  'The  roost  to  which  I  refer 
was  situated  in  what  is  locally  known  as  a  "cedar 
glade, "  near  Fosterville,  Bedford  County,  Ten- 
nessee. This  is  a  great  cedar  country,  and  Rob- 
ins used  to  come  in  immense  numbers  during  the 
winter  months,  to  feed  on  the  berries.  By  the 
middle  of  a  winter's  afternoon,  the  birds  would 
begin  coming  by  our  house  in  enormous  flocks 
which  would  follow  one  another  like  great  waves 
moving  on  in  the  direction  of  the  roost.  They 
would  continue  to  pass  until  night.  We  lived  fif- 
teen miles  from  the  roost,  and  it  was  a  matter 
of  common  observation  that  the  birds  came  in 
this  manner  from  all  quarters. 


ioo     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

"  'The  spot  which  the  roost  occupied  was  not 
unlike  numerous  others  that  might  have  been 
selected.  The  trees  grew  to  a  height  of  from 
five  to  thirty  feet,  and  for  a  mile  square  were 
literally  loaded  at  night  with  Robins.  Hunting 
them  while  they  roosted  was  a  favorite  sport.  A 
man  would  climb  a  cedar  tree  with  a  torch,  while 
his  companions  with  poles  and  clubs  would  dis- 
turb the  sleeping  hundreds  on  the  adjacent  trees. 
Blinded  by  the  light,  the  suddenly  awakened  birds 
flew  to  the  torch  bearer,  who,  as  he  seized  each 
bird,  would  quickly  pull  off  its  head,  and  drop  it 
into  a  sack  suspended  from  his  shoulder. 

"  The  capture  of  three  or  four  hundred  birds 
was  an  ordinary  night's  work.  Men  and  boys 
would  come  in  wagons  from  all  the  adjoining 
counties  and  camp  near  the  roost  for  the  purpose 
of  killing  Robins.  Many  times,  one  hundred  or 
more  hunters  with  torches  and  clubs  would  be  at 
work  in  a  single  night.  For  three  years  this  tre- 
mendous slaughter  continued  in  winter,  and  then 
the  survivors  deserted  the  roost.'  ' 

These  are  almost  the  identical  methods  em- 
ployed in  killing  untold  numbers  of  Wild  Pigeons, 
which  is  today  probably  an  extinct  bird  in  Amer- 
ica. This  is  followed  by  the  testimony  of  William 
Dutcher,  the  very  Commander-in-Chief  of  all 
constructive  methods  and  conservative  bird  work 
in  America. 


A  Dish  of  Robins  101 

"Wherever  the  Robin  breeds  within  the  con- 
fines of  civilization,  man  is  its  friend,  and  a  mu- 
tual attachment  has  grown  up  that  borders  on 
sentiment.  The  man  extends  his  protection  and 
the  bird  rewards  by  making  his  home  almost 
under  the  same  roof  tree,  displaying  a  confidence 
in  his  human  brother  that  is  begotten  by  lack  of 
fear. 

"In  the  Robin's  winter  home  in  the  southland, 
all  is  different,  for  there  no  sentiment  but  that  of 
gastronomies  is  displayed;  the  bird  is  simply  a 
tender  morsel  to  be  made  an  integral  part  of  a 
stew  or  a  pie.  In  Central  Tennessee  are  large 
tracts  of  cedars,  the  berries  of  which  serve  to 
attract  myriads  of  Robins  in  the  winter.  One 
small  hamlet  in  this  district  sends  to  market  an- 
nually enough  Robins  to  return  $500,  at  five  cents 
per  dozen,  equal  to  120,000  birds.  My  inform- 
ant naively  says :  'They  are  easily  caught  at  night 
in  the  roost  in  young  cedars;  we  go  to  the  roost 
with  a  torch  and  kill  them  with  sticks,  others  climb 
the  trees  and  catch  the  Robins  as  they  fly  in/ 
One  of  the  officers  of  the  Louisiana  Audubon  So- 
ciety furnishes  the  following  information  regard- 
ing Robin  slaughter  in  his  own  state:  'They  are 
commonly  killed  for  home  consumption  and  for 
marketing,  a  conservative  estimate  of  the  number 
killed  annually  being  from  a  quarter  of  a  million 
in  ordinary  years  to  a  million  when  they  are  un- 


102     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

usually  plenty.  During  the  past  winter  one  gun- 
ner killed  over  300  Robins  in  one  day,  and  in  one 
village  in  the  state  the  boys  and  young  men  are 
vying  with  each  other  for  a  record  in  Robin- 
killing,  the  present  high  score  being  200  birds  in 
one  day.'  Better,  by  far,  sentiment  than  slaugh- 
ter, as  the  one  preserves  and  the  other  destroys 
what  is  of  great  value,  as  will  be  proven  later." 

From  these  gloomy  pictures  of  greed,  and 
blood-lust  and  depravity,  I  turn  to  the  annual 
visits  of  a  pair  of  Robins — possibly  escapes  from 
the  bird  shambles  in  Tennessee — who  for  five 
years  nested  in  a  vegetable  dish  on  a  two-by-four, 
in  an  open  passageway,  just  outside  my  office  door. 
The  first  little  dish  was  left  there  by  accident 
and  found  and  appropriated  by  the  birds,  and 
afterward  was  put  there  for  their  convenience. 
What  beautiful  confidence  and  seeming  affection 
for  man  in  spite  of  his  vile  treatment  of  them  in 
certain  localities;  building  their  home,  without 
hands,  open  to  human  inspection  by  the  door 
where  he  passed  many  times  a  day.  Later  on,  the 
bright-eyed  babies  adopted  each  visitor  as  a  foster 
parent  and  never  failed  to  stretch  wide  their  big, 
wide  mouths  for  supplementary  feedings.  Ours 
was  the  only  dish  of  Robins  to  be  spoken  of  with- 
out loathing  and  disgust.  It  was  surely  the  same 
pair  that  came  year  after  year  to  an  accustomed 
nesting  place,  for  after  the  fifth  year  no  nest  has 


A  Dish  of  Robins  103 

ever  been  built  there,  though  an  empty  dish,  cov- 
ered by  dust,  like  the  little  toy  soldier,  is  still 
"waiting  the  long  years  through."  Till  death  over- 
took them,  they  came  unto  their  own,  and  their 
own  received  them  with  hearts  full  of  affection. 
I  never  see  a  Robin,  cheerful  and  active  as  he 
always  is,  without  a  feeling  that  I  am  confronting 
an  object  that  stands  for  much  that  is  best  in  life. 
To  me,  he  is  eternal  hope,  dressed  in  working 
clothes.  The  poet  Campbell  dressed  up  hope  so 
gorgeously  that  he  makes  you  feel  like  Moses  in 
the  presence  of  the  burning  bush : 

Eternal  HOPE !  when  yonder  spheres  sublime 
Peal'd  their  first  notes  to  sound  the  march  of 

Time, 

Thy  joyous  youth  began — but  not  to  fade — 
When  all  the  sister  planets  have  decay'd; 
When,  wrapt  in  fire,  the  realms  of  ether  glow, 
And   Heaven's  last  thunder  shakes  the  world 

below, 

Thou,  undismay'd  shalt  o'er  the  ruins  smile 
And  light  thy  torch  at  Nature's  funeral  pile. 

Against  these  lurid  surroundings  of  eternal  hope 
in  the  last  rays  of  a  burning  sunset,  I  have  a 
memory  picture  of  a  living  incarnate  eternal  hope 
in  the  cool  dawn,  after  a  night  of  tempest, — and 
this  living  hope  is  only  a  Robin  redbreast.  A 
tornado,  in  the  blackness  of  darkness,  wrecked  a 


104     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

house  in  which  was  a  woman  and  her  little  daugh- 
ter, the  husband  and  father,  a  fresh  air  tubercular 
case,  in  a  shack  outside;  all  three  found  them- 
selves together,  they  knew  not  how,  stunned, 
bruised,  despairing.  Though  not  mortally  in- 
jured, they  and  all  their  friends  united  in  the 
feeling  that  unmerciful  disaster  had  done  its 
worst.  It  was  a  case  of  who  has  woes  like  unto 
my  woes  and  individually  and  collectively,  they 
looked  the  part. 

There  came  into  my  mind  some  words  that  I 
had  learned  from  a  song  of  doubt  that  seemed 
a  pretty  good  expression  of  my  own  pessimism: 

"There  is  no  good!    There  is  no  God 
And  faith  and  hope  is  a  heartless  cheat 
Baring  the  back  for  the  devil's  rod 
And  scattering  thorns  for  the  feet." 

Then  I  saw  the  Robin !  His  nest  had  been  hurled 
from  a  tree  and  the  eggs  all  crushed,  but  he 
wasn't  crushed, — far  from  it.  The  very  embodi- 
ment of  eternal  hope,  cheerfulness  and  energy,  he 
and  his  busy  wife  were  getting  ready  to  build  a 
new  nest  in  a  wood-shed  that  had  outstood  the 
storm. 

Your  pardon,  but  I  hear  a  Robin  and  am  going 
out  in  the  sweet  sunshine  to  get  the  uplift  of  a 
moment's  association  before  the  night  cometh, 
with  man's  closest  bird  friend. 


CHAPTER  X 

MR.  CHICKADEE 

It  has  been  said  that  America  comprises  Rhode 
Island  and  the  other  States  of  the  Union.  I 
understand  it  to  mean  that  little  Rhody  is  not  to 
be  bunched,  but  demands  especial  mention.  Now 
be  this  as  it  may,  something  of  the  kind  certainly 
applies  to  the  Chickadee, — to  any  one  who  really 
knows  him,  it  is  the  Chickadee  always  having  espe- 
cial mention,  and  the  rest  of  the  feathered  crea- 
tures that  make  up  the  bird  kingdom.  It  was 
said  many  years  ago,  that  to  know  Madam 
Recamier  was  equivalent  to  a  polite  education, 
and  it  may  be  said  with  even  greater  truth  that 
to  know  one  Chickadee  is  equivalent  to  a  scien- 
tific knowledge  of  all  the  stuffed  birds  in  kingdom 
come. 

As  the  only  interest  the  majority  of  people 
have  in  a  bird  is  its  value  for  food,  I  want  to  say 
right  here  and  now,  that  for  that  purpose,  as  a 
neighbor  woman,  here  in  the  South,  said  of  her 
husband:  "He  haint  worth  shooten."  Down  in 
Dixie  Land,  where  nearly  every  bird  that  flies 

105 


io6     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

finds  its  way  to  the  table,  I  never  succeeded  in 
running  down  any  sufficient  proof  to  convince  me 
that  any  human  hyena  had  ever  devoured  Chick- 
adees, though  such  may  be  the  fact.  Without  the 
excuse  of  starvation,  staring  him  in  the  face,  the 
libel  on  God's  creatures,  who  would  do  a  thing 
like  that  ought  to  be  Anathema  Maranatha. 

As  Mr.  Chickadee  never  had  an  enemy,  and 
isn't  of  value  for  food,  it  would  look  as  though 
in  their  relation  he  never  had  any  valid  reason 
to  distrust  man;  but  that  is  far  from  the  truth, 
for  he,  in  common  with  all  other  birds,  has  had 
good  reason  to  fear  "the  relentless,  remorseless 
bird-skin  collector."  To  kill  a  Chickadee  for  any 
purpose  seems  almost  next  to  the  murder  of  an 
infant  for  the  coral  on  its  neck,  in  fact  the  Chick- 
adee is  the  real  Peter  Pan  of  the  bird  kingdom. 
He  has  never  grown  up,  but  from  first  to  last  is 
a  dear  goo-gooing  baby;  guileless,  confiding,  care- 
free, with  close  relations  to  all  our  happy  yester- 
days and  vitally  connected  with  all  our  longed-for 
to-morrows;  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  bird  life. 

Adolph  Buzze  had  about  the  right  notion  with 
regard  to  the  blessed  Chickadee.  When  he  was 
building  his  cabin  in  the  woods,  in  zero  weather, 
they  came  in  great  numbers,  and  I  was  astonished 
beyond  measure  to  find  wild  birds  so  intimate  with 
a  human  creature.  He  picked  out  yellow  worms 
from  between  the  bark  and  the  log  he  was  hew- 


Mr.  Chickadee  107 

ing  for  the  log  house,  and  scattered  them  at  his 
feet  and  they  came  in  flocks,  Adolph  calling  them 
"Frenchman's  wood  chicks."  Maybe  Adolph 
was  a  poet  for  this  sounds  something  like  it.  I 
asked  him  where  they  came  from.  He  did  not 
answer  at  first  but  after  awhile,  with  a  far-away 
look  on  his  face,  he  pointed  to  the  sky  and  said: 
"When  Frenchman  build  little  house  in  woods, 
Mighty  God  send  blessings  by  Chicks.  See,  easy 
'nuff." 

In  early  life,  in  common  with  so  many  foolish 
people,  I  took  it  for  granted  that  something  of 
value  may  be  learned  about  birds  in  the  study  of 
stuffed  specimens.  In  nearly  the  first  case  was  a 
stuffed  Chickadee,  possibly  one  of  the  very 
messengers  that  had  brought  a  blessing  from 
"Mighty  God"  to  the  Frenchman's  cabin  so  many 
years  ago.  It  was  rather  an  unfortunate  experi- 
ence for  me,  from  that  moment  to  the  present 
time  I  feel  about  the  whole  wretched  business  as 
I  imagine  a  devotee  of  religion  would  feel  if  he 
entered  a  cathedral,  of  his  own  faith,  and  found 
Cherubs  pinned  to  the  walls  like  butterflies  in 
cases. 

Caesar  dead  and  Caesar  alive  are  a  million  miles 
apart.  The  Chickadee  in  his  natural  environ- 
ment, very  much  alive,  with  his  little  song  so  full 
and  running  over  with  cheer,  and  the  pitiful 
stuffed  specimen,  named  and  numbered  and  sur- 


io8     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

rounded  with  crude  decorative  attempts  is  a  trav- 
esty of  the  real  thing,  who  as  Robert  Browning 
said  of  the  thrush: 

"He  sings  each  song  twice  over, 
Lest  you  should  think  hie  never  could  recapture 
The  first  fine  careless  rapture." 

The  movie  man  calls  his  undeveloped  films 
"stills,"  but  these  dead  and  dusty  things  in  cases, 
that  once  were  birds,  can  never  be  developed  into 
something  with  a  vital  relation  to  life,  they  are 
"stills"  forever.  To  study  them  is  to  study  death, 
not  life;  as  well  study  the  withered  flower,  the 
dead  and  leafless  tree,  or  a  moss-grown  tomb. 

I  am  yet  to  meet  any  bird-lover  who  was  ready 
to  admit  that  he  ever  learned  anything  of  birds 
of  real  value  by  the  study  of  the  stuffed  specimens 
in  the  museum  and,  of  course,  pictures  of  these 
stuffed  specimens  are  equally  worthless.  I  once 
asked  a  class  in  high  school  to  name  for  me  a 
photograph  of  "Bob  White"  after  he  had  disap- 
peared from  Wisconsin,  that  had  been  made  from 
a  stuffed  specimen — and  someone  called  it  a  Tur- 
key Buzzard,  without  a  dissenting  voice  being 
raised  in  the  class.  Indeed,  that  fine  naturalist, 
W.  H.  Hudson,  in  his  book,  "Birds  and  Man," 
repudiates  the  notion  that  anything  can  be  learned 
of  birds  by  the  study  of  the  finest  collection  in 
existence.  He  says:  "These  collections  help  no 


Mr.  Chickadee  109 

one,  and  their  effect  is  confusing  and  in  many 
ways  injurious  to  the  mind,  especially  to  the  young. 
A  multitude  of  specimens  are  brought  before  the 
sight,  each  and  every  one  a  falsification  and  degra- 
dation of  nature,  and  the  impression  left  is  of  an 
assemblage,  or  mob,  of  incongruous  forms,  and 
of  a  confusion  of  colors." 

"These  dreary  remnants  of  dead  things  set  be- 
fore them  as  restorations  and  as  semblances  of 
life,  produce  a  profoundly  depressing  effect." 
"The  best  work  of  the  taxidermist,  who  has  given 
a  lifetime  to  his  bastard  art,  produces  in  the  mind 
only  sensations  of  irritation  and  disgust."  From 
the  above  extracts  from  his  writings,  it  is  easy 
to  get  his  point  of  view  with  regard  to  the  stuffed 
specimen  as  unnecessary  and  useless  in  the  study 
of  the  birds  he  knew  from  a  close  and  extended 
personal  relation  in  their  natural  environment.  It 
is  scarcely  putting  it  too  strongly  to  say  that 
according  to  his  system  of  theology  the  collector 
stood  for  the  devil  himself. 

The  difference  between  a  "Bird  Lover"  and  an 
"Ornithologist"  is  much  the  same  as  between  a 
"Demonstrator  of  Anatomy"  and  a  "Family 
Physician,"  one  gains  his  facts  from  death,  the 
dissection  of  a  dead  body,  the  other  from  life, 
the  study  of  a  living  creature.  Follow  in  the  foot- 
steps of  the  Ornithologist,  pure  and  simple,  and 
they  will  lead  you  to  a  shamble,  a  Valley  of 


no     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

Shadows,  where  death  reigns,  making  one  think 
of  what  King  Herod  did  to  this  world  when  he 
ordered  the  slaughter  of  the  innocent.  Systematic 
Ornithology  is  scarcely  necessary  at  present,  it 
has  been  done  and  well  done,  and  back  of  much 
of  the  so-called  scientific  examination  of  birds' 
stomachs  is  the  commercial  demand  for  a  stuffed 
specimen.  On  the  first  page  of  our  this  week's 
village  paper  is  an  article  on  birds,  a  scientific 
article,  beyond  question;  an  account  of  the  exam- 
ination of  the  stomachs  of  some  of  our  rare  and 
beautiful  birds  is  given  and  the  statement  is  made 
that  271  stomachs  were  available. 

This  certainly  suggests  a  successful  drive  upon 
the  part  of  the  Allies — Scientists,  Plume  Hunters 
and  Curators.  We  can  but  adopt  the  justly  cele- 
brated words  of  Madame  Roland  and  cry  out: 
"O!  Blind  and  deaf  and  bloody  Ornithology, — 
'what  crimes  have  been  committed  in  thy  name.' ' 

You  can  learn  something  about  birds  in  a  mu- 
seum that  happens  to  have  a  collection  of  stuffed 
specimens,  and  most  museums  have,  and  you  can 
learn  something  of  the  piano,  under  a  good 
teacher,  if  you  never  have  anything  but  a  dumb 
instrument  to  practice  upon,  but  in  both  cases  the 
element  of  life  is  wanting  and  discord  will  be  the 
inevitable  result  of  misdirected  study. 

In  all  his  long  years  of  study  in  the  Philippines, 
I  notice  that  Dean  Worcester  failed  to  secure  the 


Mr.  Chickadee  in 

skin  or  stuffed  specimen  of  a  single  native  and 
no  one  scoffed  at  his  failure  to  do  so ;  but  had  he 
been  an  Ornithologist  studying  birds,  such  actions 
would  have  discredited  his  work  for  all  time. 
Now  as  a  matter  of  fact  we  "Bird  Lovers"  care 
mighty  little  about  the  inside  of  a  bird,  and  what 
we  want  to  learn  most  of  all  is  how  to  protect 
them  from  their  enemies  and  their  so-called 
friends,  who  simply  regard  them  as  being  worth 
skinning. 

Scorning  to  make  the  slightest  concession  to  the 
man  "whose  god  is  his  belly,"  in  passing,  perhaps 
it  will  be  as  well  to  make  a  little  concession  to 
the  man  whose  god  is  a  little  row  of  figures  show- 
ing the  net  earnings,  for  three  hundred  and  sixty- 
five  days,  of  the  farm  in  which  every  other  inter- 
est is  merged,  and  assure  him  that  his  Chickadees 
brought  him  in  more  than  his  chickens.  I  do  not 
care  whether  you  believe  it  or  not,  but  all  growing 
things  are  menaced  by  a  mighty  and  ever-increas- 
ing army  of  insectSj  and  this  tiny  Chickadee 
is  a  dough-boy  attacking  the  enemy  in  his  trenches 
and  destroying  as  many  as  five  or  ten  thousand  on 
a  single  drive.  This  country  has  National  For- 
ests and  the  Chickadee  is  our  best  National  For- 
ester. Nevertheless  I  am  loath  to  discuss  his 
economic  value,  for  to  me  it  seems  a  bit  like  ask- 
ing the  economic  value  of  the  benediction  that 
follows  after  the  prayer.  We  cannot  put  an  esti- 


112     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

mate  on  spirituality  and  the  Chickadee  is  a  spirit 
and  must  be  worshiped  in  spirit  and  in  truth. 

If  men  realized  their  condition  of  pur-blind- 
ness, they  would  have  to  say,  with  the  one  of  old 
whose  sight  was  being  restored,  "I  see  men  as 
trees  walking,"  for  it's  only  the  exceptional  per- 
son who  really  sees  things  just  as  they  are;  for 
only  a  few  things  carry  any  impression  to  the 
brain,  and  where  that  actually  takes  place,  it  is 
soon  effaced.  A  certain  man  went  from  New 
York  to  Boston  and  when  his  friends  asked  him 
what  he  saw,  he  replied  in  a  perplexed  manner: 
"Oh I  nothing  much;  all  I  remember  is  two  hay- 
stacks I  saw  out  the  car  window,  but  they  were 
going  in  an  opposite  direction."  A  brilliant  man 
who  graduated  from  Harvard  at  nineteen  went 
for  a  familiar  walk  along  a  much-travelled  road 
one  Sunday  morning,  taking  with  him  his  two 
boys,  aged  six  and  eight,  and  a  seven-year-old 
daughter  of  his  host.  On  his  return  he  said  to 
the  little  girl's  father:  "Your  daughter  made  me 
feel  like  a  fool  this  morning.  As  you  know,  I 
have  taken  this  walk  two  or  three  times  a  day  for 
the  last  two  weeks  and  during  all  that  time  I  can 
recall  seeing  only  two  birds,  a  Robin  and  some 
kind  of  a  wader,  so  when  your  little  daughter 
pointed  out  a  half  a  dozen  and  knew  all  about 
them,  too,  it  made  me  feel  like  no  end  of  a  fool." 
An  unusually  fine,  big-hearted,  intelligent  man, 


Mr.  Chickadee  113 

but  alas,  the  "trees  he  saw  walking"  had  no  leaves 
on  them. 

A  few  years  ago,  with  the  help  of  this  same 
little  girl,  now  grown  to  womanhood,  we  devoted 
some  winter  days, — we  each  had  our  separate 
window, — to  watching  the  Chickadees  that  came 
to  the  free  lunch  counter  that  we  maintained  out- 
side on  the  veranda.  By  no  stretch  of  the  imagi- 
nation could  we  have  called  our  work  either  Salva- 
tion Army  or  Red  Cross,  for  our  visiting  dough- 
boys always  brought  their  cheer  with  them.  They 
all  wore  the  same  uniform  but  no  two  looked  alike, 
and  by  the  third  day  all  had  gone  through  with 
their  baptismal  service  and  in  the  name  of  the 
Father,  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  had  been 
given  Christian  names.  Please  do  not  think  that 
I  am  going  to  give  the  whole  list  of  names,  for 
such  is  not  my  intention,  except  in  the  case  of 
certain  individuals  to  whom  you  are  given  a  spe- 
cial introduction.  It  went  a  long  way  in  the 
direction  of  confidential  relations  when  we  could 
call  each  by  his  first  name  and  with  them  as  with 
people,  nicknames  stood  for  chumminess.  "Othel- 
lo" was  certainly  blacker  than  the  average,  but 
to  be  perfectly  honest,  failed  a  little  in  jealousy 
toward  his  wife,  "White  Girl,"  and  tragedy  was 
unknown  in  a  conventional  marriage  in  which 
they  lived  happily  ever  afterward.  Neither  could 
we  keep  it  up,  and  later  on  they  became  "Blackie" 


H4     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

and  "Whitey,"  the  rather  common  members  of  a 
rather  uncommon  community.        Of  course  she 
knew  that  her  husband  had  done  his  country  some 
service    and   that  was    all   there   was   about   it. 
"Romeo"   and  "Juliet"  were  very  much  in  evi- 
dence, and  while  they  had  cut  out  the  balcony 
scene  altogether,  they  gave  us  many  a  veranda 
scene,  which  is  the  next  thing,  and  even  at  this 
late  day  I  feel  it  perfectly  right  to  tell  the  truth 
(and  I  have  a  witness  who  will  also  swear  to  it) 
throughout  the  entire  veranda  scene,  they  were 
always  eating  peanuts.     He  was  some  lover  but 
with  a  trifle  too  much  assurance,  and  while  we 
never  did,  we  were  always  fearful  of  hearing  the 
word  universal  used  in  connection  with  his  ability 
to  do  a  single  balcony  scene.     Anyway,  it's  the 
good  husband  that  counts  in  the  journey  of  the 
years  rather  than  the  great  lover.     In  a  quiet  and 
harmless  way  there  were  reasons  for  suspecting 
"Juliet"  of  being  a  bit  flirtatious,  which  may  have 
given   "Romeo"   cause   for  being  too   ready   to 
crowd  his  attentions  upon  strangers  on  short  no- 
tice.    However  this  may  be,  before  the  first  sea- 
son was  over,  matrons  were  calling  him  Mr.  Im- 
pudence and  the  name  stuck,  without  any  baptis- 
mal service. 

It  is  a  fact,  though  I  question  if  well  known, 
that  a  raw  peanut  shelled  and  sliced  across,  is  to 
a  winter  bird  what  candy  is  to  a  child.  In  a 


Mr.  Chickadee  115 

shallow  cigar  box,  tacked  on  the  window  sill,  was 
kept  a  supply  of  fine-cut  suet,  hemp  seed,  and 
sliced  peanut;  a  well-balanced  ration,  but  not  bal- 
anced for  long  as  the  peanut  would  disappear  like 
snow  in  summer,  leaving  only  the  hemp  seed  and 
the  suet.  All  accepted  the  inevitable  with  a  fair 
amount  of  Christian  patience  and  resignation, 
with  the  exception  of  Mr.  Impudence,  who  never 
failed  to  be  outraged  and  ready  to  voice  his 
wrongs  to  the  world  at  large,  and  to  the  head 
waiter,  grinning  at  him  out  of  the  window,  in 
particular.  I  am  not  going  to  admit  that  he 
actually  swore  at  me,  but  the  way  he  would  droop 
his  wings  and  hurl  expletives  at  me  that  were 
neither  necessary  nor  ornamental,  made  me  feel 
just  as  if  I  had  been  sworn  at.  When  I  supplied 
his  needs,  he  blessed  me  with  the  unction  of  a 
bishop  offering  forgiveness  to  a  penitent  sinner. 
Indeed,  he  knew  who  it  was  that  put  the  food  in 
the  box  and  when  having  made  an  exhibition  of 
himself,  if  I  had  not  compared  him  to  a  bishop, 
I  would  tell  you  that  he  would  actually  do  penance 
himself  by  taking  a  hemp  seed  and  flying  to  a 
nearby  tree,  hold  the  seed  against  a  limb  with  his 
middle  toe,  pick  out  the  heart,  and  devour  the 
kernel  as  though  it  had  become  to  him  a  means  of 
grace.  My  daughter  had  a  Chick  that  she  called 
"Mother  Mary,"  of  so  devout  a  look  and  gracious 
a  mien  that  she  insisted  that  the  old  masters  had 


n6     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

painted  the  expression  a  thousand  times.  Well ! 
perhaps.  Cheerful  and  fearless,  what  can  'be 
more  exalted?  What  a  joyous  company,  a  little 
lower  than  the  angels,  but  super-human  just  the 
same!  All  agree  that  there  is  a  great  gulf  be- 
tween man  and  the  "animal  kingdom/'  but  the 
Chickadee  bridges  it  in  a  single,  uninterrupted 
journey,  when  he  comes  flying  from  nowhere  to 
light  upon  your  hand.  Victor  Hugo  once  said: 
"No  man  who  has  ever  really  laughed  can  ever 
afterward  be  bad."  Be  this  as  it  may,  I  am 
thoroughly  convinced  that  after  a  wild  bird  has 
crossed  the  gulf  and  voluntarily  submitted  itself 
to  your  loving  kindness,  it  thereby  swings  open 
the  door  to  its  own  kingdom  and  makes  of  you  a 
loyal  ally,  for  from  that  time  on  you  are  a  man 
who  has  dreamed  dreams  and  seen  visions. 

In  mid-afternoon  of  a  gray  winter  day,  return- 
ing from  a  cold  and  difficult  drive  over,  or 
through,  mighty  drifts,  my  wife  met  me  at  the 
door  and  asked  if  I  would  not  feed  the  birds  at 
once  for  a  party  from  a  nearby  town  who  had 
brought  two  little  girls  to  see  the  birds  eat  out 
of  my  hand  and  had  been  waiting  for  some  time 
in  spite  of  drifting  roads.  I  immediately  at- 
tempted to  comply  and  for  a  bad  ten  minutes  cer- 
tainly felt  like  a  large-sized  "Nature  Faker/'  for 
the  little  flock  of  Chickadees  that  came  at  my 
call  would  not  come  near  the  tempting  sliced  pea- 


Mr.  Chickadee  117 

nut  that  I  held  in  my  open  hand.  They  came  into 
the  railing  of  the  veranda  just  over  my  head,  and 
Mr.  Impudence  bombed  me  with  expletives  and 
they  all  "dee  de  de  deed"  me  at  a  great  rate,  but 
eat  out  of  my  hand  they  would  not.  I  finally 
ugot  it  through  my  hair"  that  they  had  a  not  un- 
natural instinct  against  a  fur-bearing  animal,  and 
I  had  kept  on  my  Coonskin  coat.  I  dropped  it 
off,  and  presto,  I  was  no  Nature  Faker  at  all,  but 
a  lunch  counter  where  no  meal  ticket  was  required. 

The  next  winter  my  daughter,  after  an  illness, 
spent  some  hours  a  day  in  a  wheel-chair  on  this 
same  veranda  and  the  Chickadees  overcame  their 
fear  of  her  fur  coat  and  simply  walked  all  over 
her;  often  taking  peanuts  from  her  hand  and  fly- 
ing up  to  her  hat,  which  they  used  as  a  table.  I 
would  have  you  know  that  the  Chickadee  has 
very  pretty  table  manners, — in  violent  contrast, 
for  instance,  to  the  Nut-hatch,  whose  table  man- 
ners are  atrocious. 

We  long  since  ceased  to  cultivate  too  great  an 
intimacy  with  our  bird  friends,  being  convinced 
that  it  is  a  doubtful  kindness  to  rob  them  of  their 
instinct  of  self-preservation,  and  above  all  else 
teach  them  not  to  be  shy  of  man.  Over  on  an- 
other street,  fully  a  mile  away,  a  Chick  attempted 
to  investigate  the  bowl  of  a  pipe  that  an  old 
German  had  in  his  mouth  but  was  not  smoking, — 
possibly  looking  for  a  place  to  hole  up  in  the  cold 


u8     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

weather, — and  the  man  thinking  himself  attacked, 
struck  the  friendly  little  creature  to  the  ground 
and  killed  him.  It  was  certainly  a  warning  to  us, 
for  we  had  failed  to  teach  our  birds  not  to  at- 
tempt even  the  average  pipe  without  a  gas-mask. 
In  this  little  study  of  the  Chickadee  it  has  been 
hard  to  stick  to  prose,  which  is  my  only  reason  for 
lapsing  into  rhyme. 

When  the  blizzard  from  the  Northland 
Holds  the  world  in  fierce  embrace 
And  ten  million  swirling  crystals 
Sting  you,  blind  you,  smite  your  face  ; 
And  your  world  is  not  your  world, 
Grotesque  distortions,  bush  and  tree; 
Above  the  raging,  howling  tempest 
Comes  a  joyous  chick-ardee. 
In  the  soul  there's  something  hidden, 
That  such  a  message  comes  to  greet; 
Above  the  rage  of  human  passion 
Comes  a  whisper  strangely  sweet; 
A  little  song  from  out  the  tempest, 
Born  of  hope  for  you  and  me, 
There's  love  eternal  in  the  storm  cloud 
When  this  bird  sings  chick-a-dee. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  SONG  AND  THE  SINGER 

Gene  Stratton-Porter's  "Song  of  the  Cardinal" 
is  a  kind  of  a  winged  epic  and  at  the  same  time  a 
passionate  protest  against  the  man  with  a  gun. 
The  man  with  a  gun  is  consciously  attempting  to 
kill  a  singer,  but  is  quite  unconscious  of  the  fact 
that  if  he  succeeds  he  will  also  have  eliminated  a 
song  from  the  waning  chorus  of  the  summer  time. 

This  sad  old  world  is  in  crying  need  of  more 
songs,  but  each  year  the  number  of  singers  grows 
less  and  the  volume  of  song  fainter  and  fainter 
and  in  places  it  has  been  swallowed  up  by  all  per- 
vading silence.  Song  is  something  vast  and  great, 
at  large  in  nature,  waiting  for  the  voice  that  can 
give  it  utterance  and  none  can  say  that  it  was  not 
born  close  to  that  realm  where  angels  have  their 
birth.  Whether  the  utterance  comes  to  us  through 
the  medium  of  a  bird  or  a  human  singer,  the 
uplift  is  identical  and  always  in  the  direction  of 
the  better  things  in  life. 

On  Howard  Avenue,  Biloxi,  Miss.,  a  few  years 
ago  there  was  a  fruit-stand,  managed  by  an  old 

119 


120     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

Italian  woman  and  she  had  in  captivity  a  wonder- 
fully beautiful  Cardinal,  the  one  bird  that  carries 
the  colors  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin  through 
all  the  Southland,  and  this  splendid  fellow  had  not 
only  been  robbed  of  his  birth-right  of  freedom, 
but  his  eyes  had  been  put  out  with  a  red-hot  iron 
that  he  might  not  be  able  to  tell  night  from  day 
and  would  thus  forever  keep  on  calling  for  a  dawn 
whose  approach  he  would  never  again  behold. 
Fight  down  your  indignation  and  honest  rage 
against  the  perpetrator  of  the  hideous  outrage, 
as  I  did  mine,  and  get  down  on  your  knees  and 
thank  Heaven  that  neither  captivity  nor  blindness, 
nor  both  together,  can  silence  a  singer  that  is  a 
member  of  God's  orchestra. 

When  life  is  in  its  fresh,  glowing,  splendid 
morning,  youth  with  its  ardors  and  unvoiced  long- 
ings demands  the  new  songs,  but  when  experience 
has  steadied,  possibly  saddened,  the  heart  de- 
mands the  heavenly  manna  of  the  old  songs. 
It's  not  so  long  ago  that  the  realization  came  that 
there  are  no  new  songs ;  that  a  song,  like  a  prov- 
erb, to  be  truly  great  must  have  the  approval  of 
unnumbered  people  through  a  long  period  of  time. 
Every  time  a  national  song  is  sung  it  becomes 
greater,  there  adheres  to  it  something  of  the  sen- 
timent, the  emotions  of  the  singer,  so  the  solo 
becomes  equivalent  to  the  mighty  chorus.  Call 
this  fancy  if  you  please,  but  I  never  alone  listen 


The  Song'  and  the  Singer  12  r 

to  a  solitary  bird  song, — I  am  one  of  a  vast  audi- 
ence, and  the  singer  is  one  of  a  vast  choir  invisible. 
Be  this  as  it  may,  surely  the  quality  of  bird  song 
is  so  fine  it  appeals  to  the  finer  sentiments  of 
our  dual  natures  like  a  voice  from  the  vanished 
years.  We  are  all  human,  and  when  we  hear 
Joseph  Addison  approving  of  the  music  of  some 
of  our  bird  friends,  the  approval  is  some  way 
divided  between  the  bird  and  ourselves;  the  bird 
as  a  good  singer  and  we  as  good  listeners.  I  here- 
with give  an  Addison  letter  that  you  may  see 
what  he  thought  of  the  song  and  the  singer.  This 
letter,  written  in  the  year  1708,  by  Joseph  Addi- 
son, to  the  young  Earl  of  Warwick,  whose  mother 
he  afterward  married,  is  full  of  a  charm  that 
time  has  not  dimmed.  It  reads  as  follows : 
"My  dearest  Lord: 

"I  can't  forbear  being  troublesome  to  your 
Lordship  while  I  am  in  your  neighborhood.  The 
business  of  this  is  to  invite  you  to  a  concert  of 
music  which  I  have  found  in  a  neighboring  wood. 
It  begins  precisely  at  six  in  the  evening  and  con- 
sists of  a  Blackbird,  a  Thrush,  a  Robin,  and  a 
Bullfinch.  There  is  a  Lark  that,  by  way  of  over- 
ture, sings  and  mounts  till  she  is  almost  out  of 
hearing,  and  afterward  falls  down  leisurely  and 
drops  to  the  ground  as  soon  as  she  has  ended 
her  song.  The  whole  is  concluded  by  a  Night- 
ingale that  has  a  much  better  voice  than  Mrs. 


122     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

Tufts  and  something  of  Italian  manner  in  its 
diversions.  If  your  Lordship  will  honor  me  with 
your  company,  I  will  promise  to  entertain  you 
with  much  better  music  and  more  agreeable  scenes 
than  you  have  met  with  at  the  Opera." 

Addison's  appreciation  of  old  friends  of  ours 
carries  back  into  the  past,  a  point  of  view  that 
divorces  a  real  singer  from  an  anatomical  speci- 
men. It's  a  rill  near  the  head-waters  of  that 
great  river,  that  disregarding  mere  drift  wood,  is 
now  rather  generally  recognized  as  one  of  the 
living  forces  of  the  world-creation's  poetry,  crea- 
tion's choral  singers. 

Joseph  Addison,  recognized  as  a  thinker  of  un- 
usual power,  of  necessity,  could  not  neglect  the 
wonderful  house  of  life  in  which  he  lived  and  had 
his  being,  and  consequently  investigated  bird 
life  and  had  his  soul  thrilled  with  bird  music; 
music  way  beyond  man's  imitation  of  something 
to  be  heard  where  dawn  winds  laugh  and  the  trees 
of  the  field  clap  their  hands.  It  was  an  old  song 
that  the  Blackbird  was  singing  in  those  days,  but 
what  Addison  heard  was  inferior  to  what  Frances 
Ledwidge  heard  and  makes  us  hear.  Listen : 

"And  then  three  syllables  of  melody 
Dropped  from  a  Blackbird's  lute  and  died  apart 
Far  in  the  dewy  dark.     No  more  but  three, 
Yet  sweeter  music  never  touched  a  heart 
'Neath  the  blue  domes  of  London." 


The  Song  and  the  Singer  123 

This  humble  Irish  poet,  this  inspired  Nature 
lover,  this  sweetest  singer  among  sweet  singers, 
shortly  before  making  the  supreme  sacrifice  for 
his  country,  put  this  echo  of  himself  and  the  song 
of  a  bird  into  the  heart  of  humanity. 

Lieutenant-Colonel  John  McCrae,  "when  in 
the  thick  of  it,"  saw  Flanders'  fields  with  the  eyes 
of  a  seer  and  sweeps  the  heart-strings  of  humanity 
with  a  "Swan-song,"  the  like  of  which  was  never 
written,  calling  upon  the  world's  heroes  for  help, 
not  for  himself,  but  for  his  cause, — that  he  might 
sleep  where  Poppies  blow  in  Flanders'  fields.  In 
the  little  poem  of  fifteen  lines,  two  and  a  half 
are  devoted  to  a  great  song  that  is  being  sung 
to  terrific  accompaniments: 

"And  in  the  sky 

The  larks,  still  bravely  singing,  fly 
Scarce  heard  amid  the  guns  below." 

What  he  hears  is  no  madrigal,  a  mere  expression 
of  sylvan  bowers  and  love  and  gaily  flitting  hours, 
it  of  necessity  must  have  been  a  heroic  battle- 
song,  like  the  great  ones  "whose  footsteps  echo 
through  the  corridors  of  Time." 

In  the  sky  of  the  soldier's  mind,  in  his  better 
moments,  there  often  came  the  shadow  of  pass- 
ing wings  and  his  soul  at  such  a  time  was  often 
enthralled  by  some  dominant  bird  song — the  phan- 
tom of  a  silent  song  for  which  he  listened  though 


124     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

he  knew  he  could  not  hear  it.  He  put  it  into 
his  marching  songs  and  it  shortened  weary  miles 
— a  spiritual  urge,  a  voiceless  benediction  from 
vividly  remembered  yesterdays: 

"There's  a  long,  long  trail  a-winding, 
Into  the  land  of  my  dreams, 
Where  the  Nightingales  are  singing, 
And  a  white  moon  beams." 

Not  only  to  marching  men,  but  to  the  world 
weary,  the  lonesome,  the  man  away  from  home, 
has  the  singing  of  wild  birds  come  with  an  inspira- 
tion and  an  ever-present  help  in  time  of  need. 
This  story  seems  to  confirm  a  general  belief.  A 
man  whom  unmerciful  disaster  followed  fast, 
found  himself  so  beset  with  difficulties  that  he 
made  up  his  mind  to  go  throw  himself  in  a  river 
from  a  bridge;  when  he  got  there,  he  found  a 
bunch  of  boys  in  swimming  at  the  very  place  where 
he  was  going  to  end  it  all.  Without  the  least 
modification  of  his  resolve,  he  hid  himself  in  some 
bushes  and  settled  down  to  wait  their  departure. 
Suddenly  a  brown  bird,  a  Brown  Thrasher,  in  a 
tree  almost  over  his  head  began  to  sing,  and  the 
song  gripped  the  soul  of  him,  snatched  him  out  of 
hell,  as  he  lay  there  grovelling  with  his  mouth 
in  the  dust.  City  bred,  he  had  never  listened  to 
a  bird  song — had  the  utmost  contempt  for  those 
who  did — and  now  when  he  could  not  help  him- 


The  Song  and  the  Singer  125 

self,  wonderful  waves  of  melody  had  taken  him 
captive,  had  lifted  him  up  in  an  indescribably 
tender  embrace  and  made  a  new  creature  of  him. 
It  was  no  common  bird  song,  it  was  a  pean  of 
victory  over  the  redemption  of  the  most  miserable 
wretch  beneath  the  blue  sky.  Almost  before  he 
knew  it,  he  was  crying  over  the  vanquished  cur 
who  had  come  down  to  the  river  to  end  all  and 
the  next  instant,  he  was  laughing  and  rejoicing 
with  the  man  who  was  going  back  to  town  to  win 
his  own  place  in  a  world  that  was  not  all  discord. 
Both  beauty  and  melody  are  divinely  ordained  to 
bring  about  the  salvation  of  the  lost  and  they 
frequently  unite  in  the  wild  bird  and  the  super- 
human song. 

In  the  general  narration  of  what  birds  have 
done  for  me,  I  recall  a  case  when  a  wandering 
voice  came  to  me  with  inexpressible  cheer  and 
comfort, — shepherding,  so  to  speak,  a  lost  sheep 
— at  what  age  does  a  human  creature  cease  to  be  a 
lamb  and  become  a  sheep, — is  it  seven?  Lured 
by  a  cow-bell  on  the  neck  of  a  frisky  creature  that 
possibly  was  in  training  to  jump  over  the  moon, 
I  had  wandered  from  six  to  nine  o'clock,  and 
finally  lost  my  way,  in  a  forest  where  fences  were 
unknown  and  cattle  ranged  for  miles.  I  was  soon 
to  recall  snatches  of  conversation  that  neighbors 
had  carried  on  with  my  father.  We  children 
were  not  allowed  to  hear  much  of  the  talk,  always 


126     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

being  sent  out  of  the  room.  Old  Clesen  Smith  had 
figured  it  out,  if  "it"  kept  coming  at  its  present 
rate  of  speed,  "it"  would  hit  the  earth  in  just 
three  days.  Grant  Culver  was  sure  that  if  "it" 
did  not  change  its  course  it  wouldn't  touch  his 
house  but  might  tick  his  barn,  ten  rods  to  the  east, 
and  that  was  fully  covered  by  insurance.  Old 
George  Walker  said  that  if  the  Bible  was  true, 
there  would  be  signs  to  give  up  our  leases — he 
said  this  with  a  sly  chuckle — that  the  world  was 
so  given  over  to  wickedness  that  nobody  had  kept 
any  look-out  for  the  signs  of  the  second  coming 
and  he  had  a  notion  that  things  would  go  on 
about  as  they  were  for  a  little  time  longer. 
George  was  a  friend  of  mine,  and  I  don't  care  if  I 
did  listen  at  the  key-hole.  Ezra  Wilson  had  heard 
that  over  at  the  Seventh  Day  Settlement,  they  were 
airing  out  their  ascension  robes,  and  getting  ready 
for  the  second  coming.  We  children  heard  what 
Daddy  said,  for  he  had  a  big,  carrying  voice  that 
would  leak  out  of  a  little  room  and  besides,  he 
kept  talking  when  the  neighbors  were  going  down 
the  path.  He  just  told  them  not  to  be  fools,  and 
said  that  if  old  George  Walker  was  right  and  the 
world  was  much  more  than  six  thousand  years 
old,  that  would  simply  strengthen  what  he  had 
been  telling  them,  that  no  such  catastrophe  had 
ever  happened  in  the  past  and  that  was  a  very 
strong  assurance  that  it  was  not  going  to  take 


The  Song  and  the  Singer  127 

place  now.  These  simple  people  were  afraid  of 
something,  but  it  was  kept  from  us  and  we  did 
not  have  the  slightest  notion  of  what  all  the  talk 
was  about.  Jerry  Norton  had  called  to  us  from 
way  out  in  the  lake,  where  he  was  fishing,  that 
we  had  best  sharpen  up  our  tomahawks  as  there 
was  going  to  be  an  Indian  war.  Nobody  believed 
him,  as  a  rule,  but  I  think  we  concluded  that  he 
was  telling  the  truth  and  began  to  think  Indians. 
Now  I  was  in  no  way  prepared  for  what  I  saw, 
when  coming  out  of  a  thick  growth  of  poplars 
on  the  edge  of  a  little  marsh,  I  saw  a  great  fiery 
body  with  a  long  tail  of  flame  in  the  midnight 
sky,  rushing  straight  toward  me.  Clesen  Smith 
was  no  fool  and  he  had  said  "it"  would  come  in 
three  days — and  that  was  three  days  ago.  All 
the  world  was  more  or  less  afraid  of  that  big 
comet  of  sixty  years  ago ;  is  it  any  wonder  that  a 
lost  child  in  the  woods — lonely  and  afraid — 
should  have  been  simply  terror-stricken?  A  mad 
panic  seized  him  and  he  ran  like  a  frightened 
hare  through  under-brush  and  vines  and  bram- 
bles that  scratched  his  face  and  tore  his  scanty 
clothes,  insensible  to  every  feeling  except  the  de- 
sire to  put  all  the  space  possible  between  himself 
and  the  awful  thing  that  was  going  to  hit  the  earth 
right  near  the  poplar  swamp  where  he  first  saw 
it.  He  kept  it  up  till,  panting  and  sobbing,  he 
fell  to  the  earth  unable  to  proceed  a  single  step 


128     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

further;  his  race  was  run.  How  long  he  lay 
there,  he  never  knew.  He  was  roused  out  of  the 
sleep  of  exhaustion  by  a  voice,  a  calm,  steady, 
deliberate  voice,  clearly  unafraid  of  what  was  go- 
ing to  happen  to  the  world,  saying  over  and  over 
again:  "Whip-poor-will,  Whip-poor-will,  Whip- 
poor-will";  and  it  was  a  disembodied  voice,  bird, 
animal,  or  human,  he  could  not  tell,  but  comfort- 
ing as  the  hand  of  his  mother  stroking  his  per- 
spiring head.  He  wanted  to  get  closer  and  as 
he  approached,  it  retreated;  he  forgot  everything 
else,  it  was  all  swallowed  up  in  the  desire  to  get 
closer  to  the  wonderful  comforter.  Ahead,  he  sud- 
denly saw  a  hole  in  the  woods;  they  were  coming 
to  a  clearing  and  in  a  moment  more  he  was  in  a 
path  that  seemed  familiar,  and  the  next  he  knew 
there  was  Adolph  Buzze  swinging  down  the  path 
toward  him,  singing  a  French  song.  When  he 
got  hold  of  his  hard,  strong  hands,  he  held  on, 
not  saying  very  much,  but  just  holding  on.  "Oh ! 
bird  come  every  night.  Some  joke  about  whip- 
ping-Will; was  no  Will  to  lick.  Oh!  yes,  about 
comet — that  big  joke,  too.  Mighty  God,  scare 
foolish  children  with  Mr.  Longtail,  then  he  say 
Mr.  Fire-eater,  go  chase  yourself  and  he  go,  easy 
5nuf." 

Good  men,  through  my  adolescence,  on  revival 
occasions  were  in  the  habit  of  trying  to  uncover 
hell,  an  anti-climax  after  the  big  comet,  and 


The  Song  and  the  Singer  129 

though  they  tried  to  make  us  hear  as  well 
Heaven's  last  trumpet  shaking  the  world  below, 
what  I  really  heard  was  "Whip-poor-will,  Whip- 
poor-will,  Whip-poor-will."  Dear  kindly  voice 
that  in  my  distressed  childhood  led  me  to  Adolph 
and  the  home  pathway  where  the  cows  had  come 
of  themselves,  been  milked,  and  were  chewing 
their  cuds  as  unmindful  of  the  fiery  comet  as 
Adolph  himself.  How  often  in  after  years  did  the 
memory  of  all  this  come  to  me  on  silent  wings  with 
healing  for  spiritual  ills  and  guidance  to  the  green 
pastures  and  still  waters  where  souls  are  restored. 
Woodrow  Wilson  has  performed  a  stupendous 
service  for  humanity,  the  greatest  conceivable 
service,  when  he  liberated  among  selfish  mankind 
a  devotion  to  principle  for  which  men  were  glad 
to  give  their  substance  and  their  lives.  Among 
the  clangor  of  sordid  aims,  the  snarls  of  defeated 
profiteers,  the  vituperation  of  political  enemies, 
one  clear  voice  has  risen,  saying  over  and  over 
again  the  same  thing:  the  weak  must  be  protected, 
the  world  made  safe  for  the  individual.  What 
is  to  be  the  power  to  bring  this  to  pass?  The 
greatest  in  the  world — spiritual  force, — the  only 
power  that  is  adequate,  on  earth,  to  remove  moun- 
tains of  ignorance  and  selfishness.  If  you  will,  a 
dreamer  is  making  a  dream  come  true,  preparing 
the  world  to  see  beauty  that  it  has  never  seen; 
to  hear  music  that  it  has  never  heard.  Natural 


130     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

beauty  and  natural  music  are  so  inherently  spirit- 
ual that  they  can  only  be  spiritually  discerned.  I 
am  using  this  word  spiritual  in  no  narrow  ecclesi- 
astical sense,  but  in  the  wide  sense  of  oneness, 
with  the  only  forces  that,  concealed  by  the  tem- 
poral, are  eternal.  Brother,  mine,  the  poor  tem- 
poralities of  life  have  prevented  you  from  seeing 
the  singer  and  hearing  the  song. 

Returning  in  the  night,  after  an  absence  of 
more  than  four  months,  it  seemed  most  fitting 
that  the  insistent  reveille  of  the  Loon  should  usher 
in  the  dewy  freshness  of  the  late  April  dawn,  and 
be  the  fore-runner  of  a  host  of  familiar  voices 
that,  also,  woke  the  echoes  of  many  a  dim  and 
far-away  spring  morning.  I  found  myself  not 
only  listening  to  the  cry  of  this  particular  Loon, 
but  to  every  cry  of  the  kind  I  had  heard  since 
childhood.  It  almost  seemed  as  though  these 
half-forgotten  voices  lived  again,  or  else  I  was 
hearing  the  echoes  of  those  long  since  smothered 
in  the  silence  of  death.  When  I  first  heard  it,  it 
seemed  nothing  less  than  the  terrible  voice  of 
some  unknown  wild  beast,  or  the  lament  of  a  lost 
soul  in  torment,  and  long  after  I  knew  the  sound 
came  from  a  bird  and  was  possibly  a  love  call, 
certain  sub-conscious  echoes,  in  my  childish  mind, 
would  cause  fear  to  show  a  leering  face. 

The  next  voice  was  that  of  the  Mourning  Dove. 
Sweet  and  tender  as  the  dawn,  yet  seemingly 


The  Song  and  the  Singer  13 1 

charged  with  an  inexpressible  plaint,  an  eternal 
lament,  fitting  it  beyond  any  other  wild  thing,  to 
tell  its  woeful  story  o'er  and  o'er  amid  the  wreck- 
age of  old  battle-fields.  Indeed,  there  seems  no 
personal  element  in  it — if  it  be  grief  at  all,  and 
from  having  been  accustomed  to  think  of  it  as 
expressed  in  exclusive  lament  for  that  fine  lover, 
Cock  Robin,  dead  before  his  time,  a  little  stretch 
of  the  imagination,  and  lo!  a  universal  lament 
over  the  wretchedness  of  humanity. 

Optimism  is  born  again  at  the  sound  of  the 
cheery  voice  of  Cock  Robin  himself,  very  much 
alive  and  seemingly  well  satisfied  with  the  world  , 
and  life  as  he  finds  it,  or  at  least  putting  up  a 
splendid  bluff.  Mr.  Woodpecker,  I  hear  those 
sounds  you  are  making,  two  blocks  away,  using  a 
telephone  for  a  drum  and  as  an  Irishman  might 
say,  while  you  are  waking  the  echoes,  you  are  not 
saying  a  word. 

The  Song  Sparrow,  everybody's  darling,  is 
next;  swinging  back  the  cob-webbed  doors  into 
the  music  room  of  one's  heart  of  hearts. 

Ah!  I  hear  you,  Mr.  Red-Winged  Blackbird, 
in  the  willows  down  by  the  lake,  and  your  song 
is  liquid  sweetness,  long  drawn  out,  a  joy  forever; 
a  thread  of  gold  running  through  the  years,  a 
tinkling  melody,  not  of  the  earth  earthy. 

How  good  it  seems  to  be  at  home ;  how  inex- 
pressibly good  to  be  at  home  with  all  these  voices 
of  Nature. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  LOVE  ELEMENT  IN  BIRD   PROTECTION 

The  poet  Bryant  wisely  calls  attention  to  the 
fact  that  it  is  to  those  who  held  loving  com- 
munion with  Nature,  to  whom  she  speaks  and 
for  whom  she  has  a  message  in  all  the  changing 
conditions  of  human  life.  It  is  equally  true  that 
to  those  who  do  not  love  her,  she  is  as  silent  as 
the  Sphinx.  Love  is  the  key  to  the  great  realm 
of  nature — the  wonderful  house  of  life. 

In  a  profound  reverence  for  life,  some  of  the 
vanished  civilizations  have  mighty  lessons  to  teach 
the  man  of  to-day,  who  is  dominated  by  his  lust 
to  kill.  Egypt  had  its  "sacred  Ibis"  and  anyone 
killing  it  was  guilty  of  murder  and  the  punish- 
ment was  death.  Why  was  it  thus  highly  es- 
teemed? Because  in  the  old  days  "Ra  came  down 
from  heaven  and  said  unto  one  of  the  gods  of 
Egypt:  'Thou  art  in  my  place  and  thou  shalt  be 
called  Theth,  the  representative  of  Ra.'  Then 
the  majesty  of  the  god  of  Ra  spake  unto  Theth, 
saying:  4I  will  make  something  shining  and  re- 
splendent in  the  under-world  and  in  the  land  of 

132 


The  Love  Element  in  Bird  Protection     133 

the  deep.  And  I,  also,  give  unto  thee  power  to 
send  forth  thy  messengers.'  Thereupon,  the  Ibis, 
the  messenger  of  Thoth,  came  into  being.  The 
miraculous  bird  was  beneficent  in  all  his  ways, 
destroying  locusts,  scorpions,  serpents,  and  the 
noxious  creatures  which  infested  the  country  and 
its  searching  out  and  destruction  of  these  enemies 
to  the  growing  crops  and  to  man  himself  led  to 
the  profound  respect  which  this  messenger  of  a 
god  enjoyed."  > 

Theth,  inventor  of  astrology  and  mathematics, 
the  god  of  wisdom  and  magic,  the  one  among 
them  with  divine  power  to  restore  the  dead  to 
life,  and  the  Ibis  became  one  and  inseparable.  He 
was  often  pictured  as  having  the  head  of  an  Ibis, 
even  when  restoring  the  dead,  and  the  picture  of 
the  bird  is,  indeed,  the  hieroglyphic  of  his  name 
as  well  as  the  hieroglyphic  for  "the  soul."  Is  it 
not  possible  that  the  weakness  in  the  love  element 
in  our  regard  for  bird-life  will  help  explain  why 
this  all  seems  such  nonsense  to  us.  Nevertheless, 
much  might  be  said  in  support  of  the  belief  that 
the  bird  is  the  gift  of  God,  and  in  very  fact  in- 
separably associated  with  man's  well-being  on  the 
earth — -beneficent  messengers  meriting  loving  rev- 
erence. Having  written  thus,  much  of  what  will 
doubtless  sound  like  ancient  fable,  may  I  be  per- 
mitted to  add  a  parable  of  the  1919  model? 

Professor   Blake,   returning   from   a   morning 


134     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

walk  brought  in  his  hand  the  dead  body  of  a 
small  bird,  looking  strangely  like  a  Canary.  His 
three  children  gathered  around  him  and  he  ex- 
plained to  them  that  it  was  an  American  Gold- 
finch and  not  a  Canary,  though  sometimes  called 
one.  Instantly  the  children  lost  interest  when 
they  found  out  that  it  was  not  a  Canary  and  they 
were  hunting  up  their  playthings ;  and  it  is  doubt- 
ful if  they  heard  him  as  he  went  on  to  tell  them 
that  the  dead  bird  belonged  to  the  family  of  Frin- 
gillidae  and  its  correct  name  was  Spinus  tristis. 
Certain  it  is,  that  Spinus  tristis  had  had  no  place 
in  their  affectionate  little  hearts.  Finding  that 
the  children  had  no  further  interest  in  his  find  of 
the  morning,  the  Professor  tossed  the  dead  bird 
out  of  the  window,  as  a  breakfast  for  the  family 
cat.  Just  at  that  instant  his  wife  came  flying  into 
the  room  with  a  bird-cage  in  her  hand, — uOh, 
John,  Dicky  is  dead,"  she  cried.  Toys  are  dis- 
carded and  every  child  takes  up  the  wail,  "Dicky 
is  dead" — and  it  is  a  tender  husband  and  father 
whose  own  eyes  are  misty  as  he  attempts  to  com- 
fort his  weeping  family.  Later  on,  he  makes  the 
little  coffin  and  he  and  his  wife  stand  at  an  upper 
window  while  the  children  conduct  funeral  serv- 
ices in  the  garden  below. 

There  is  a  stern  pressure  of  the  clasping  hands 
of  the  parents  when  Baby  comes  to  make  the 
prayer.  He  is  actually  kneeling  by  the  open  grave 


The  Love  Element  in  Bird  Protection     135 

and  his  troubled  little  face  is  lifted  up  to  the  blue 
dome  of  the  sky  as  he  says:  "  'Our  Father  in 
heaven,  hallowed  by  thy  name/  Dicky  is  dead,  we 
are  planting  him  in  the  garden,  so  please,  'Our 
Father  in  heaven,  hallowed  by  thy  name,'  to  keep 
him  from  taking  cold  so  he  can  sing  to  us  like  he 
used  to,  when  we  come  to  heaven  looking  for  him. 
Amen." 

Why  the  difference  in  the  effect  of  the  death 
of  these  two  birds,  looking  so  much  alike,  on  this 
family?  The  answer  is  not  far  to  seek.  In  one 
case,  they  had  little  knowledge  and  no  affection. 
In  the  other  they  had  intimate  knowledge  and 
great  affection.  After  all,  it  is  the  love  element 
that  we  must  depend  upon  to  save  the  remnant 
of  vanishing  wild  birds. 

There  is  a  profoundly  philosophical  statement 
to  the  effect  that  "things  seen  were  not  made  by 
things  that  do  appear."  In  other  words,  back 
of  the  tangible  thing  before  us,  are  unseen  and 
often  remotely  operating  causes.  In  every  life 
are  what  are  called  red-letter  days — something 
sharply  defined,  a  new  point  of  view,  the  instan- 
taneous dominion  of  a  strong  emotion.  Detach- 
ments of  gray  mist  are  deploying  across  a  hillside 
in  the  early  dawn  of  a  May  morning,  after  a 
night  of  rain.  The  big  guns  of  the  storm  clouds 
had  put  on  their  barrage  and  their  receding  roar 
could  be  heard  across  the  lake  to  the  southwest. 


136     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

The  wind  had  fallen  to  a  zephyr,  the  zephyr  to  a 
sigh  and  the  sigh  had  faltered  and  died  and  the 
tremulous  leaves  of  the  poplars  waited  orders. 
Suddenly,  out  of  the  strangeness,  out  of  the  gray- 
ness,  a  part  of  the  waiting  silence,  taking  posses- 
sion of  the  universe,  a  red  bird,  a  flame  of  fire, 
adding  the  visible  presence  of  God  to  the  mist- 
enclosed  tabernacle  in  the  wilderness.  For  this 
cause,  the  bare-footed  boy  had  come  into  the  for- 
est— he  had  mistakenly  thought  he  had  come  in 
search  of  cattle — for  he  was  a  worshiper  before 
it  would  have  been  possible  to  put  the  shoes  from 
off  his  feet,  had  he  had  any  on.  Worship  is  a 
mysterious  cradle  in  which  love  sleeps  and  dreams 
and  grows  strong  and  is  made  perfect.  It  was 
only  a  Scarlet  Tanager,  but  it  swiftly  led  him 
through  all  the  stages  and  gradations  of  emotion, 
and  a  radiant  vision  of  childhood  was  transformed 
into  a  tangible  possession  enriching  all  of  life. 
James  Lane  Allen  and  Gene  Stratton-Porter  have 
each  put  their  Cardinals  into  a  volume,  but  my 
Tanager  and  the  dreams  and  fancies  connected 
with  him  are  so  much  a  part  of  the  heart  of  me 
and  the  great  heart  of  Mother  Nature  that  prose 
seems  inadequate  and  poetry  itself  could  do  little 
more  than  call  attention  to  something  beyond  it, — 
like  allusions  to  dawns  and  sunsets.  Though  the 
Scarlet  Tanager  did  not  make  a  great  poet  of  me, 
it  put  great  poetry  into  the  woods  and  some  of 


The  Love  Element  in  Bird  Protection     137 

the  very  finest  kind  of  blank  verse  into  every-day 
life.  There  is  no  other  bird  like  the  Scarlet 
Tanager  in  the  North  woods  and  if  you  think  it 
pagan  to  make  a  deity  out  of  him,  at  least  en- 
throne him  as  a  High  Priest  in  the  temple  of 
Beauty. 

Quite  a  good  many  years  ago,  we  had  snow  on 
the  thirtieth  of  May,  and  being  out  driving  with 
my  family  we  came  around  the  base  of  a  hill,  and 
there  before  us  not  a  hundred  feet  away,  in  a  dead 
tree,  were  two  birds  not  ten  feet  apart, — one  an 
Indigo-Bunting  and  the  other  a  Scarlet  Tanager. 
A  little  daughter  who  had  been  studying  the  flags 
of  all  nations,  said  they  were  the  colors  of  the 
English  flag  and  then  we  saw  them  together 
against  the  snow-covered  hill — Red,  White  and 
Blue.  Looking  back  across  a  war-devastated 
world  where  a  Peace  Conference  is  now  in  session, 
the  remote  Memorial  Day  becomes  exceptional — 
made  so  by  two  birds  that  quickly  separated  and 
snow  that  melted  like  a  dream  that  all  taken  to- 
gether, for  a  brief  moment  gave  us  the  colors  in 
the  flags  of  the  three  greatest  nations  on  the  face 
of  the  earth — England,  France,  America. 

Next  to  the  Tanager,  the  Indigo-Bunting  is  our 
most  beautiful  bird.  In  the  estimation  of  very 
many,  he  stands  for  the  cloudless  sky,  the  halcyon, 
the  perfect  day.  Sky-blue,  like  truth  in  which 
there  is  no  mixture  of  error,  the  whole  apparel  is 


138     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

from  a  patch  of  the  perfect  blue  above.  As  the 
Eagle  is  a  national  emblem  so  should  our  weather 
service  adopt  this  calm  serene  Blue-bird  as  the 
fitting  emblem  of  the  kind  of  weather  most  de- 
sired. As  a  general  favorite,  the  real  Bluejbird 
scores  over  the  rarer  and  more  reserved  Bunting. 
Five  hundred  people  know  and  love  the  Bluejbird 
where  one  never  saw  the  other.  In  the  north,  the 
Blue-bird  with  the  Robin  is  a  harbinger  of  spring 
and  is  loved  for  his  engaging  ways;  winning  ways, 
they  surely  are,  as  is  proven  by  the  large  number 
of  his  friends.  With  the  house  Wren  and  Robin, 
his  relations  are  close  and  almost  confidential  with 
man.  The  first  thing  on  his  return  he  comes 
around  your  home  looking  to  see  if  in  his  absence 
you  have  provided  him  with  a  house,  which  is  his 
first  choice.  If  you  have  not  done  so,  he  finds  a 
suitable  place  as  close  to  you  as  possible,  and  goes 
to  house-keeping.  If  your  soul  is  not  dead  within 
you,  the  presence  of  such  a  neighbor  is  looked 
upon  as  a  general  improvement  of  the  whole 
neighborhood.  John  Burroughs  says  that  "the 
Blue-bird  has  the  sky  on  his  back  and  the  earth 
on  his  breast/'  It  seems  as  though  he  must  have 
the  red  clay  of  Georgia  in  mind  rather  than  the 
dark  loam  of  Wisconsin.  However  this  may  be, 
the  thought  is  fine,  a  dear  familiar  bird  standing 
for  both  earth  and  sky.  No  weather  is  too  cold 
for  the  Chickadee,  or  too  warm  for  the  Blue-bird ; 


The  Love  Element  In  Bird  Protection     139 

I  iiever  saw  the  first  seek  protection  from  the  cold 
nor  the  second  from  the  fiery  rays  of  the  sun. 
The  Blue-bird,  beyond  any  other  bird  I  know,  is 
a  bird  of  the  sun-light  and  will  not  live  in  the 
shade.  On  the  lawn  of  my  home,  is  a  venerable 
apple  tree,  the  last  of  a  large  pioneer  orchard. 
It  is  partially  hollow  and  principally  decayed,  but 
every  year  it  buds  and  blossoms  and  puts  forth 
a  wealth  of  leaves  that  keeps  the  sun  from  pene- 
trating to  the  bole  of  the  tree.  Seeing  Blue-birds 
casually  investigating  the  tree,  year  after  year, 
and  never  building  in  any  of  its  numerous  cavities, 
I  concluded  that  it  must  be  on  account  of  the  bad 
state  of  decay  in  which  they  found  the  trunk  of  the 
tree.  So  I  put  my  latest  thing  in  a  bird-house  in 
the  deep  shade  in  the  center  of  the  tree  and  the 
Blue-birds  came  and  looked  it  over  and  did  a  lot 
of  talking  among  themselves  and  then  took  up 
quarters  else-where.  Different  models  of  houses 
were  tried  but  with  no  success,  and  then  I  got  a 
hunch ;  it's  the  shade.  The  neglected  house  in  the 
tree  was  quickly  moved  to  the  top  of  a  fence  post 
up  by  the  garden,  all  in  the  merry  month  of  May, 
and  in  no  time  it  was  taken  on  a  long-time  lease 
and  has  not  been  vacant  since. 

One  year  a  pair  of  Blue-birds  set  up  house-keep- 
ing about  six  feet  from  the  ground,  in  an  aban- 
doned Wood-pecker's  hole,  in  the  dismantled  stub 
of  an  old  apple  tree.  Nothing  could  have  been 


140     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

more  public  than  the  selection  of  a  nesting  place. 
It  was  on  Hotel  grounds  and  not  two  hundred  feet 
from  a  tennis  court  and  from  the  beginning  of  the 
nest  building  to  the  flight  of  the  brood,  people 
passed  constantly  and  visitors  frequently  came  in 
crowds.  All  this  disturbed  the  birds  not  at  all, 
and  it  did  not  require  a  whole  lot  of  imagination 
to  fancy  the  proud  parents  posing  the  babies  for 
their  pictures  after  they  came  out  of  the  hole  in  the 
tree.  It  was  a  beautiful  Summer-school  where 
little  children,  world-weary  people  born  and  reared 
in  cities,  entered  together  a  kindergarten  where 
the  teachers  were  birds  that  stood  for  the  earth 
and  the  sky. 

Time  spent  in  bird  study  that  does  not  trans- 
form the  student  into  the  lover  is  time  thrown 
away.  Only  spiritual  forces  can  conquer  material 
brute  lust  and  selfishness.  London-Bridge  can  be 
fiddled  down  and  love  can  conquer  Jungle-land. 
Just  as  soon  as  a  large  number  of  people  place 
upon  our  bird  neighbors  proper  aesthetic  value — 
a  value  not  to  be  computed  in  dollars  and  in 
cents — but  in  heart  throbs  and  pure  joy — we 
will  be  assured  that  love  will  bring  about  the  ful- 
filling of  the  law. 

Nobody  does  anything  in  this  world  worth 
while  except  where  action  is  the  expression  of  an 
emotion,  a  sentiment  not  all  of  the  earth  earthy. 
Horse  breeders,  dairy-men,  shepherds,  chicken 


The  Love  Element  In  Bird  Protection     141 

and  dog  fanciers  and  swine  growers  have  a  certain 
interest  in  the  creature  that  occupies  their  thought 
and  monopolizes  their  activities ;  but  I  fancy  that 
none  of  them  would  care  to  be  reckoned  the  ac- 
tual lover  of  the  creature  they  care  for,  while  on 
the  other  hand  those  who  care  for  birds  are  proud 
to  be  known  as  bird-lovers.  A  very  learned  and 
somewhat  famous  educator  once  wrote  me  offer- 
ing the  chair  of  nature  study  in  a  school  of  which 
he  was  president  and  the  letter  went  on  to  state 
that  people  who  ought  to  know,  had  recommended 
me  as  an  accomplished  ornithologist.  I  wrote 
right  back  and  said  that  there  must  be  some  mis- 
take, I  was  no  ornithologist  at  all,  never  had 
claimed  to  be  anything  of  the  kind,  and  I  was  glad 
to  be  able  to  state  that  there  was  nothing  in  my 
past  suggestive  of  King  Herod — being  only  a  bird- 
lover. 

Just  as  people  are  constantly  asking  you — if  you 
happen  to  know  ten  lines  of  poetry — what  is  your 
favorite  poem,  so  people  are  always  asking  me 
what  is  my  favorite  bird.  The  question  puts  me 
in  the  position  of  a  person  with  a  big  family  being 
asked  which  is  the  favorite  child.  It  being  more 
or  less  embarrassing,  I  have  invariably  tried  to 
side-step  it  and  even  now  I  think  I'll  have  to  do 
the  "Lady  or  the  Tiger."  There  are  Mourning 
Doves  and  Bronze  Grackles ;  each  has  had  a  large 
place  in  my  heart — which  is  the  dearest  dear,  you 


142     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

must  decide.  Before  I  tell  their  story,  I  wish  to 
call  attention  to  a  general  law.  Intimate  knowl- 
edge and  close  association  are  necessary  conditions 
of  real  affection.  Why  the  Dove  and  the  Grackle? 
I  have  only  the  one  answer;  I  have  known  them 
intimately  since  child-hood — they  are  old  play- 
mates. 

"A  burnt  child  dreads  the  fire"  is  the  proverb, 
and  an  analysis  of  the  why  would  show  that  the 
flame  had  burned  itself  deeply  into  the  memory. 
I  not  only  burned  my  fingers  but  my  whole  hand, 
and  got  a  live  coal  into  my  apology  for  a  shoe  in 
rescuing  a  Mourning  Dove's  nest  from  a  burning 
brush-pile.  Never  mind  about  my  eye-brows  and 
my  eye-winkers,  I  got  the  nest  out  that  was  just 
beginning  to  smoke  and  one  bird  lived,  my  very 
very  first  pet  coming  from  the  wild.  With  it 
perched  upon  my  shoulder,  I  climbed  several  steps 
up  toward  a  kingdom  where  things  fly;  it  made 
me  want  to  fly  and  later  when  it  would  make  cer- 
tain little  journeys  in  the  world,  I  would  pursue, 
running  like  the  wind.  Panting,  breathless,  de- 
spairing, certain  it  never  would  come  back,  it  al- 
ways came  straight  as  an  arrow  for  its  perch  on 
my  shoulder.  Was  ever  a  seven-year-old  so  en- 
vied by  other  boys,  especially  after  Mourny 
learned  to  take  a  grain  of  corn  from  between  my 
teeth,  fluttering  before  my  face  as  it  did  so  ?  An- 
other trick  was  to  pry  open  my  clinched  fingers 


The  Love  Element  in  Bird  Protection     143 

with  its  bill  for  kernels  of  wheat  held  in  my 
clasped  hand.  I,  alas,  had  not  heard  in  those  days 
about  Mahomet  having  something  to  eat  in  his 
ear  when  the  multitude  saw  pigeons  lighting  on 
his  shoulder  to  whisper  to  him,  or  I  might  also 
have  gone  into  the  prophet  business.  It's  rank 
exaggeration  to  say  of  any  thing  that  it's  worth 
its  weight  in  gold,  but  that  was  my  estimate  of 
my  pet.  It  was  never  caged,  but  was  left  free  to 
go  and  come,  and  it  did  both.  It  found  its  own 
kind  and  might  spend  a  half  day  in  the  fields  with 
other  doves  but  always  came  home  to  roost.  Many 
a  time  when  bringing  water  from  the  well  a  hun- 
dred yards  from  the  house,  in  the  evening,  it 
would  come  sweeping  back  and  flutter  along  before 
my  face  pretending  to  be  after  corn  from  between 
my  teeth.  My  older  sisters  said  that  I  was  a  sissy 
and  had  taught  it  to  kiss  me.  Perhaps  I  had  not 
explained  all  of  Mourny's  tricks  to  them.  I  had 
been  holding  bags  for  a  neighbor  who  had  just 
finished  thrashing  and  a  lot  of  grain  had  been  left 
around  where  the  thrashing  machine  had  stood 
and  I  had  salvaged  a  big  pocketful  for  Mourny 
and  it  was  under  my  very  eye  having  a  feast  in 
the  open  passage-way  between  the  kitchen  and 
wood-house,  when  coming  from  nowhere,  a 
strange  black  and  white  torn  cat  launched  itself 
on  the  unsuspicious  Dove  and  killed  it  in  one  sec- 
ond. Sir  Thomas  clearly  thought  he  was  getting 


144     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

some  easy  meat  and  clearly  was  in  no  way  pre- 
pared for  an  avalanche  of  boy  that  was  on  him  be- 
fore he  could  make  way  with  his  kill,  knocked  his 
prey  out  of  his  mouth  and  was  seemingly  bent  on 
squeezing  the  breath  of  life  out  of  him  as  well. 
The  strong  legs  and  powerful  feet  with  their  mur- 
derous claws  made  short  work  of  the  little  hands 
that  grasped  the  throat  of  the  small  tiger,  that 
escaped  after  lacerating  the  hands  of  a  child  be- 
longing to  the  foolish  human  creatures  who,  for 
ages,  have  harbored  it.  That  such  things  could 
be  in  the  light  of  day  had  such  a  numbing  effect 
upon  him  that  he  made  no  out-cry,  the  cat  had 
done  that  and  he  had  duly  contrasted  his  red 
hands  with  the  pitiful  red  feet  of  his  pet,  as  he 
took  the  body  out  to  the  garden  and  buried  it  be- 
fore he  allowed  them  to  take  him  to  old  Dr.  Shaw 
to  stop  the  bleeding.  Every  Mourning  Dove  since 
has  been  a  lineal  descendant  of  Mourny  and  the 
wife  and  daughter,  of  the  man  writing  this,  have 
heard  for  the  first  time  since  this  reminiscence 
was  started,  the  name  Mourny  which  all  these 
years  he  had  kept  hidden  in  his  heart. 

A  certain  Doctor  of  Divinity  here  in  the  South 
is  known  as  a  mighty  hunter,  and  a  notice  in  a 
city  paper  said  that  on  a  recent  hunting  expedi- 
tion, he  had  to  his  credit  (?)  thirty-three  Mourn- 
ing Doves;  let  those  who  will  call  him  Reverend 
Doctor, — to  me  he  is  nothing  but  an  old  Tom- 


The  Love  Element  In  Bird  Protection     145 

cat,  thirty-three  times  meaner  than  "Old  Black 
and  White  Scratches." 

Cyclonic  conditions  had  seemed  imminent  all 
the  morning,  but  the  storm  did  not  break  till  near 
eleven  o'clock  and  when  it  did  come  it  was  not  a 
twister  as  had  been  feared,  but  a  deluge  of  rain, 
a  hail-storm  and  wind  of  a  velocity  that  cuffed 
and  broke  great  branches  off  trees  as  though  in 
wild  sport.  A  carriage  load  of  people  had  sought 
refuge  in  our  house,  and  when  the  storm  was  at 
its  worst  and  we  sat  around  the  living  room  in 
almost  perfect  darkness;  some  sang  and  others 
prayed  and  we  boys  thought  it  a  fine  lark.  Such 
convulsions  of  nature  are  not  apt  to  last  long  and 
when  all  was  over  and  we  looked,  amid  indescrib- 
able wreckage  of  fences  and  tree-tops  and  heaps 
of  hail-stones,  there  was  a  woe  begone  young 
Grackle  that  could  neither  fly  nor  walk  but  was 
still  very  much  alive.  One  of  our  callers  when  he 
saw  him  said:  "Holy  Moses,  did  he  rain  down?" 
It  seemed  a  good  guess  for  as  no  Grackles  had 
nested  on  the  sand-hill  a  mile  from  any  water,  if 
the  storm  cloud  did  not  bring  him,  his  presence  re- 
mained a  mystery.  First  he  was  called  Holy 
Moses,  but  later  on  just  Moses, — never  Mose. 
It  is  not  altogether  his  black  attire  that  suggests 
the  ministerial  character,  but  for  a  fact,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  the  Raven,  he  is  the  most 
sepulchral,  stately  and  dignified  of  birds.  Every- 


146     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

body  agreed  that  Moses  was  funny,  took  life  and 
himself  that  seriously  that  it  was  positively  funny 
just  to  look  at  him.  When  he  walked  it  was  the 
Lord  Mayor  of  London  leading  a  procession  to  be 
reviewed  by  the  king,  and  then  Moses  was  always 
lame  which  made  it  all  the  funnier.  He  could  lose 
himself  about  the  grounds,  but  his  dignity,  he 
could  not  lose.  He  was  supposed  to  be  a  young 
bird  just  out  of  the  nest  when  he  first  came,  but 
soon  that  was  questioned,  he  had  such  wise  old 
ways.  Those  who  took  the  side  of  youth  pointed  to 
the  knock  down  fact  that  he  had  not  yet  learned  to 
fly.  In  two  weeks  he  was  a  very  important  mem- 
ber of  the  family,  in  four  weeks  he  owned  the 
place  and  instead  of  his  living  with  us,  we  lived 
with  him.  Wescott's  Brindle  Bull  dog  attempted 
to  cross  our  lawn  and  our  dog  Carlo,  a  mongrel 
but  some  fighter,  went  over  the  top  to  meet  this 
Hun.  It  occurred  by  the  back  kitchen  door  and 
soon  all  was  in  wild  tumult  and  Moses  forgot 
himself  to  that  degree  that  he  flew  up  into  a  near- 
by tree — remaining  there  through  the  engage- 
ment, a  kind  of  a  war  balloon  giving  Carlo  point- 
ers. When  the  dog  fight  was  over,  he  took  up 
his  old  life  and  never  again  was  known  to  attempt 
flight.  To  narrate  all  the  queer  things  he  did 
before  a  cat  got  him  would  make  a  book,  and 
what  I  aim  to  do  is  quite  the  reverse.  I  simply 
wish  to  show  that  to  the  general  acquaintance 


The  Love  Element  in  Bird  Protection      147 

with  the  Grackles  that  I  got  when  driving  the  ox 
teams  on  the  breaking  plough,  is  a  close  and  inti- 
mate relation  with  the  mysterious  King  of  the 
Grackles  who  came  out  of  the  storm  cloud  and 
made  his  home  with  us.  We  did  not  capture  him, 
he  captured  us.  I,  for  one,  did  not  know  how 
much  I  loved  him  till  the  morning  when  he  was 
not  in  any  of  his  usual  places  and  Cash  Haskins, 
who  was  helping  plant  corn,  accidentally  stumbled 
on  the  remains  of  a  cat's  supper  on  the  lawn  where 
we  saw  him  first.  Yes,  I'm  frank  to  admit  that 
I've  always  been  fond  of  Grackles  and  what  is 
more,  at  least,  some  Grackles  have  been  fond 
of  me.  I  presume  that  when  one  creature  trusts 
another  completely,  if  you  could  get  at  the  facts 
you  would  find  that  trust  bound  up  with  a  certain 
amount  of  fondness. 

Not  so  long  ago  on  a  misty  morning,  I  was 
using  a  scythe  among  some  shrubbery  that  I  did 
not  care  to  turn  over  to  the  tender  mercy  of  a 
hired  man.  I  found  there  a  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bronze 
Grackle  and  five  very  callow  babies  in  possession 
of  the  grass  I  wished  to  mow.  I  started  in  gin- 
gerly, thinking  I  would  soon  be  ordered  to  go 
about  my  business,  but  strangely  enough,  the  birds 
made  no  objection  to  my  presence  and  there  was 
neither  distrust  nor  the  faintest  anxiety  in  their 
usual  utterances.  Still,  I  did  not  realize  that  these 
birds  were  paying  me  the  highest  compliment  that 


148     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

a  wild  bird  can  pay  a  human  creature, — perfect 
confidence.  A  stranger  came  out  there  to  see  me 
on  business  and  instantly  there  was  blood  on  the 
moon.  I  took  him  by  the  arm  and  led  him  away 
but  turned  around  and  took  off  my  hat  to  the 
birds,  as  genuinely  touched  as  I  ever  was  in  my 
life.  Five  weeks  in  a  darkened  room,  when  your 
relation  with  the  outer  world  was  by  means  of  a 
bulletin,  giving  pulse  and  temperature  of  which 
you  know  nothing.  The  head  surgeon  starting  in 
at  zero,  no  chance — then,  one  in  ten,  in  five  thou- 
sand. Then  even;  then,  on  the  road  to  recovery 
and  then,  sit  up  day  after  to-morrow.  But  the 
night  before  the  appointed  time,  I  bribed  the  nurse 
to  put  two  pillows  under  my  head,  raise  the  win- 
dow shade  and  let  me  have  a  look  out.  It  was 
winter  when  they  carried  me  into  that  room,  it's 
spring  now  and  in  the  park  just  across  from  the 
hospital  a  pair  of  Crackles  are  making  a  nest. 
My  stately  friends  had  brought  the  spring  and  all 
out-doors,  so  I  could  see  it  from  my  window — 
nests,  new  life,  called  back  by  two  handfuls  of 
straw  and  mud. 

A  psychologist  of  some  note  has  recently  put 
forth  the  theory  that  black  is  not  a  color  and  if 
the  mind  is  concentrated  on  this  supposed  some- 
thing,— that  is  really  nothing, — sleep  may  be  in- 
duced. It  certainly  is  of  some  benefit  in  some 
kinds  of  insomnia.  I  started  to  concentrate  on 


The  Love  Element  in  Bird  Protection     149 

Poe's  Raven  whose  color  seems  black,  but  black  is 
not  a  color,  so  it's  nothing;  but  I  never  felt  quite 
at  home  with  some-body's  Raven  so  I  naturally 
traded  him  for  one  of  my  own  Grackles.  I  fol- 
low him  across  the  lawn  as  I  have  seen  him  walk- 
ing a  thousand  times,  he  out-walks  me;  I  grow 
weary,  lose  my  way  and  later  waking  take  up  the 
chase  again  with  the  same  result.  Who  knows, 
perhaps  it  will  be  the  King  of  the  Grackles  who 
will  gently  lead  me  down  to  my  last  sleep. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

MR.  ESAU 

In  introducing  my  friend  Mr.  Esau,  I  concede 
your  right  to  an  immediate  explanation  as  to  how 
a  Rose-breasted  Grosbeak  became  the  possessor 
of  such  an  extraordinary  name.  It's  simple  enough, 
which  is  probably  true  of  all  nick  names,  but  we 
are  not  to  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  a  nick  name 
will  not  stick  unless  it  has  the  approval  of  the 
majority  of  one's  acquaintances.  A  Rose-breasted 
Grosbeak,  a  hospital  case, — the  hospital  being  a 
big  wire  cage,  on  a  veranda, — was  seen  by  a  young 
lady  and  her  mother,  demurely  kissing  a  feminine 
caller  through  the  wires  and  what  more  natural 
than  for  the  young  lady  to  exclaim:  "I  saw  Esau 
kissing  Kate  and  the  truth  is  we  both  saw" ;  and  as 
the  act  and  the  comment  were  both  repeated,  what 
more  natural  than  for  Mr.  Grosbeak  to  become 
Mr.  Esau.  Then  again,  a  brother  had  robbed  a 
brother  of  his  birth-right  and  in  so  doing  had  de- 
prived him  of  a  blessing  that  included  the  dews  of 
heaven  and  the  fatness  of  the  earth  and  love  and 
song,  of  which  corn  and  wine  are  the  all  too  fee- 

150 


Mr.  Esau  151 

ble  symbols.  An  air-gun  that,  perhaps,  a  fond 
mother  thought  would  make  her  future  President 
manly  in  his  tender  years,  had  been  the  weapon 
used  in  the  fracture  of  a  wing,  and  this  fracture 
meant  the  robbing  of  the  organ-loft  of  a  cathedral 
tree  of  a  sweet  and  mysterious  musician,  intimate 
friend  of  Aeolian  Harpists  and  rival  of  Apollo. 

Victory  and  defeat  are  often  not  more  than  a 
minute  apart  and  one  has  a  most  unaccountable 
trick  of  usurping  the  place  of  the  other.  A  small 
boy  thrilled  with  victory  as  he  beheld  his  ani- 
mated target  falling  fluttering  through  the  limbs 
of  the  tree  earthward,  but  when  within  reach  of 
his  hand  the  splash  of  red  on  the  breast  was  mis- 
taken for  blood,  and  overwhelmed  with  remorse 
and  shame,  he  took  to  his  heels ;  and  it  was  quite 
another  boy,  who  knew  nothing  of  the  catastrophe, 
that  picked  up  the  wounded  bird  by  the  roadside 
and  carried  it  to  his  teacher  at  school  and  she,  figu- 
ratively speaking,  put  a  red  cross  upon  him,  and 
had  the  patient  rushed  to  my  hospital  for  neces- 
sary surgery. 

Like  his  great  prototype,  my  Mr.  Esau  was  a 
cunning  hunter  and  a  creature  of  the  field  and  in 
addition,  I  found  him  to  be  one  of  my  most  im- 
possible patients  fighting  each  and  every  measure 
attempted  for  his  betterment,  with  the  obstinacy 
of  a  martyr  and  the  long-suffering  of  a  saint.  The 
difficulty  was  not  in  applying  the  starched  bandage 


152     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

to  the  nicely  adjusted  fragments  of  the  greatest 
wing  bone;  the  difficulty  came  in  when  we  at- 
tempted to  hold  the  broken  wing  in  its  proper 
place.  So  to  speak,  Mr.  Esau  refused  to  carry 
his  arm  in  a  sling  and  if  there  can  be  any  such 
thing  as  silent  eloquence,  he  eloquently  announced 
his  unalterable  determination  to  die  first.  With 
some  feeling  akin  to  what  Darius  Green  enter- 
tained for  the  Wren,  my  gray  matter,  plus  that 
of  a  host  of  helpful  friends,  was  combined  in  an 
effort  to  out-wit  a  single  broken-winged,  improp- 
erly nourished  mite  of  a  bird,  who  scored  over  us 
as  the  afore-mentioned  Wren  did  over  Darius,  in 
his  attempts  at  flight.  A  four-tailed  bandage,  the 
size  of  six  postage  stamps,  laid  out  two  and  two, 
with  a  tape  sewed  to  each  corner  and  holes  cut 
for  the  legs,  when  afore-mentioned  tapes  were 
criss-crossed  and  tied  over  the  back,  was  impul- 
sively called  Eureka,  but  should  have  been  Ap- 
pomattox,  for  in  less  than  six  hours  I  found  my- 
self kneeling  upon  the  worthless  contrivance  and 
humbly  proffering  my  "Catlin"  to  Mr.  Esau  and 
expressing  the  hope  that  he  would  condescend  to 
use  my  Rush  Diploma  as  his  door-mat.  Though 
bull-dog  tugging  at  the  bandage  would  not  re- 
lieve him  of  it,  it  never  failed  to  pull  it  around 
enough  so  that  he  could  not  use  his  legs,  and  en- 
able him  to  turn  turtle ;  the  sight  of  his  red  keel 


Mr.  Esau  153 

uppermost  wrecked  faith,  hope  and  charity  every 
fifteen  minutes. 

I  had  rather  be  chief  cook  for  a  hundred  lumber 
jacks  than  personal  chef  for  a  single  caged  Gros- 
beak. Mrs.  Rorer  herself  would  have  had  to 
work  over  time  to  devise  dishes  that  would  tempt 
so  capricious  an  appetite.  Potato  bugs  were  out 
of  season  and  Crickets  and  Grass-hoppers  in  Kin- 
dergarten classes;  Dragon-flies  cruising  as  subma- 
rines and  June-bugs  undrilled  for  street  concerts; 
the  White  Grub  was  my  refuge  and  help  in  trou- 
ble. How  he  loved  them !  He  would  eat  a  half 
a  pint  in  a  day.  It  was  a  banquet  twelve  hours 
long  and  he  Fletcherized  each  individual  grub. 
He  would  hop  about  the  cage  with  a  fine  fat 
beauty  sticking  out  of  the  side  of  his  mouth,  sug- 
gesting a  devotee  getting  the  very  last  whiffs  from 
a  quarter  inch  long  cigarette.  He  would  not  eat 
an  angle  worm  on  compulsion,  or  in  any  other 
way,  and  rejecting  cherries  and  lush  strawberries, 
always  made  believe  that  he  had  a  well-bred  lik- 
ing for  grape-fruit.  Hemp-seed  he  cracked  for  the 
sake  of  the  recreation  it  afforded,  having  clearly 
no  great  liking  for  the  kernel  except  as  it  helped 
to  balance  his  White  Grub  ration.  He  never  at- 
tempted to  sing  the  songs  of  the  tree-tops  in  his 
narrow  prison-house  and  how  his  kind  learned  of 
his  predicament,  I  have  no  more  way  of  knowing 


154     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

than  I  have  of  what  they  thought  of  it  after  pay- 
ing him  repeated  visits.  Almost  every  day  he 
would  have  visitors,  both  male  and  female,  com- 
ing singly,  as  a  rule,  and  perching  upon  his  cage 
for  about  the  length  of  time  that  is  given  to  the 
formal  call,  and  my  wife  and  daughter  are  posi- 
tive that  they  kissed  at  parting.  I  take  it  that 
the  calls  were  more  or  less  formal,  for  they  never 
brought  him  any  thing  to  eat,  neither  did  he  ever 
offer  to  share  his  grub  with  them.  I  confess  to 
having  failed  to  get  any  key  to  the  mystery  of 
their  communication  and  yet  there  is  every  reason 
to  believe  that  the  misfortune  of  one  of  their  num- 
bers made  quite  a  lasting  impression  upon  the 
minds  of  his  Grosbeak  neighbors  and  friends. 
Proof  of  this  statement  will  be  offered  later  on. 

When  the  last  bandage  was  removed,  it  was 
found  that  the  bones  had  knit  properly  and  he 
had  pretty  fair  use  of  his  wing,  but  it  drooped 
and  could  not  be  held  in  place  and  extended 
flight  was  still  a  question.  For  two  weeks  more 
this  question  kept  him  in  Hospital;  the  last  night 
came,  his  splendid  progress  would  demand  the 
opening  of  the  door  at  dawn,  returning  him  to 
the  blessed  earth,  the  mysterious  fellowship  of  all 
aerial  voyagers, — free,  free,  free !  The  ways  of 
life  and  death  are  past  finding  out.  The  dawn 
came,  but  the  door  was  not  opened,  the  good 
wing  and  the  mended  one  were  equally  helpless, 


Mr.  Esau  155 

and  on  the  bottom  of  the  cage  was  a  rigid  little 
body,  the  worthless  remains  of  what  we  had 
known  as  Mr.  Esau.  Perhaps  the  eyes  blurred  a 
little  and  the  hand  was  not  usually  steady  when 
certain  rites  and  ceremonies  were  being  performed 
that  were  destined  to  change  Mr.  Esau  into,  not 
only  a  stuffed  Grosbeak,  but  a  whole  sermon  on 
the  text,  "Who  being  dead  yet  speaketh." 

Making  my  annual  bird-talk  to  the  village 
school,  shortly  after  the  death  of  the  Grosbeak, 
I  took  his  skin  with  me  and  told  his  story  and  let 
the  children  of  the  lower  grades  not  only  see 
but  handle  the  patched-up  wing,  the  only  witness 
called  for  a  time;  but  in  the  fifth  grade  I  re- 
ceived a  hunch  and  shading  my  eyes  with  my  hand 
I  began  to  look  for  the  guilty  boy;  after  a  pre- 
tended unsuccessful  search,  I  said  in  substance: 
"No,  he  is  not  here  and  if  he  was  I  would  not 
point  him  out,  for  you  all  hate  him,  hate  him  be- 
cause he  is  a  robber  and  has  robbed  you  and  me 
of  something  of  the  sweetness  and  melody  of  the 
spring-time  and  to  this  there  is  to  be  added  the 
hideous  blood-lust  that  is  supposed  to  lurk  in  jun- 
gles." "Children,"  I  continued,  "I  want  you  to 
be  very  sorry  for  this  boy's  mother — poor,  poor 
soul,  how  I  pity  her,  in  ignorance  of  his  real  char- 
acter,— sneaking,  cowardly,  pitiless, — she  is 
doubtless  hoping,  believing,  praying  ithat  her  son 
will  turn  out  a  splendid  man,  a  leader  of  men."  I 


156     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

doubtless  said  too  much,  but  Mr.  Esau's  shade — 
I'll  not  say  skin,  for  ordinarily  they  are  denied 
the  power  of  speech — said  even  more  and  the 
children  were  as  eager  to  get  hold  of  the  killer 
as  they  had  been  to  handle  the  skin  of  the  thing 
killed,  and  I  am  quite  sure  it  would  not  have  been 
anything  like  as  gently. 

Bright  and  early  Saturday  morning  following, 
the  girl  said  there  was  a  boy  in  the  outer  office 
to  see  me  and  when  she  sent  him  in  I  half  caught 
my  breath,  for  my  hunch  was  true  and  I  had  se- 
lected the  right  urchin  in  No.  five  School-room. 
Though  scarcely  ten  years  of  age,  he  was  quite 
an  old  friend  of  mine,  and  I  patted  him  on  the 
shoulder  and  for  the  fortieth  time,  I  reminded  him 
of  the  bitter  fight  he  put  up  at  the  age  of  five 
when  I  vaccinated  him.  However  much  he  had 
been  in  the  habit  of  rewarding  my  reminiscence 
with  a  pleased  little  grin,  no  ghost  of  anything  of 
the  kind  was  on  duty  nor  could  be  called  from 
afar. 

Clearly  Billy  was  in  trouble,  and  the  world 
over,  the  deeper  the  trouble,  the  more  difficult  it 
is  to  get  rid  of  the  perilous  stuff  that  weighs  upon 
the  heart.  He  was  over-whelmed  by  a  mountain 
that  stood  squarely  across  his  pathway  and  could 
only  say  when  I  asked  him  what  the  matter  was: 
"Oh!  nothen  Doc, — that  is,  nothen  much."  He 
evidently  found  the  room  warm  and  I  told  him 


Mr.  Esau  157 

to  take  a  seat  by  the  window  till  he  was  ready  to 
talk.  A  surreptitious  glance  revealed  the  fact  that 
Billy's  chin  was  trembling  and  he  had  frequent 
furtive  uses  for  his  dirty  little  handkerchief,  so 
swinging  around  I  delivered  a  "mercy  shot" — 
"Don't  feel  bad,  son,  I  '11  never  tell  any  one  that 
it  was  you  who  shot  the  Gros-beak." 

I  do  not  intend  to  be  thought  flippant  in  the 
presence  of  real  grief  when  I  say  that  before  you 
could  say  "Jack  Robinson,"  Billy  had  hold  of  my 
hand,  sobbingly  demanding  that  I  "Cross  my  heart 
and  hope  to  die."  As  there  were  still  some  duties 
and  pleasures  not  worn  entirely  thread-bare,  I  de- 
murred at  the  latter  half  of  his  demand  and  we 
compromised  on  the  first  clause  to  his  entire  sat- 
isfaction. No  possible  question  of  the  soundness 
of  Billy's  conversion  or  the  honesty  of  his  desire 
to  become  a  Billy  Sunday  among  Junior  Audubon 
Evangelists.  Before  many  audiences  in  many 
parts  of  the  country,  thus  did  Mr.  Esau  win  his 
victories  so  that  if  ever  canonized  and  given  a 
new  name  it  will  be  entirely  proper  to  call  him 
after  some  great  evangelist.  I  walked  part  way 
home  with  Billy  and  at  the  turn  in  the  road  this 
was  his  parting  confidence:  "If  you  had  told,  I 
don't  'spect  it  would  have  made  so  much  differ- 
ence with  the  fellows,  but  I  know  the  girls  would 
all  'spized  me." 

A  year  after  the  long  struggle  with  Mr.  Esau, 


1^8     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

the  one  who  had  carried  it  on  was  himself  a 
pn'soner  on  the  same  veranda,  not  in  a  cage  but  a 
wheel  chair,  contrary  beyond  question  but  not  so 
much  so  as  he  might  have  been  had  it  not  been 
for  the  flittering  ghost  of  Mr.  Esau  acting  as  a 
horrible  example.  Grosbeaks  are  shy  birds  of 
the  tree-tops,  who  reverse  the  conduct  of  good 
little  boys  by  being  more  often  heard  than  seen, 
so  it  becomes  difficult  to  imagine  my  surprise  to 
have  one  come  into  the  ornamental  wood-work 
at  the  top  of  the  veranda;  and  here  follows  the 
proof  that  they  had  not  forgotten  the  poor  cap- 
tive of  the  preceding  year;  a  maid  brought  out  a 
canary  and  hung  the  cage  under  the  veranda  and 
coming  from  nowhere  almost  instantly,  there  was 
a  Grosbeak  on  it  clearly  looking  for  Mr.  Esau. 
Singly  it  seemed  as  though  each  Grosbeak  visited 
the  cage  once  only  and  there  were  no  kisses  at 
parting.  Dickey  was  to  them  no  yellow  peril  and 
there  was  neither  race  war  nor  affection  between 
them, — only  the  Alps  of  an  impassable  indiffer- 
ence. Coming  back  to  my  own  "vine  and  fig  tree" 
from  a  hospital  that  for  me  had  been  down  close 
by  the  gates  of  death,  it  is  impossible  for  me  to 
make  any  one  understand  how  much  the  Gros- 
beaks did  for  me  when  it  became  evident  that 
among  humans  I  was  the  one  to  be  trusted.  All 
that  Spring,  always  excepting  Chickadees,  no  other 
birds  had  ever  been  so  intimate,  almost  confiden- 


Mr.  Esau  159 

tial, — if  such  a  word  can  be  used  in  connection 
with  a  bird.  They  Fletcherized  their  food,  made 
love,  fought  their  little  battles,  told  their  stories 
and  sang  their  songs,  as  though  I  was  quite  one  of 
them.  To  some  it  will  seem  like  extravagant 
sentiment,  even  when  considered  in  the  light  of  the 
thick  coming  fancies  of  a  sick  man,  but  to  this  day 
I  feel  that  I  shall  stumble  and  lose  my  way  if  I 
attempt  to  tell  all  that  is  in  my  heart  of  the  minis- 
try of  these  wild  bird  friends  who  visited  me 
when  I  could  not  go  to  the  forest  where  Spring 
and  Summer  meet. 

"Ah !  who  shall  lift  the  wand  of  magic  power, 

And  the  lost  clew  regain? 
The  unfinished  window  in  Aladdin's  tower 
Unfinished  must  remain." 


CHAPTER  XIV 

STUPIDITY  STREET 

In  an  editorial  having  the  caption;  'The  Strong 
Things  in  Life,"  the  "Times-Picayune"  of  New 
Orleans,  quoted  the  following  lines  from  the  poems 
of  Ralph  Hodgson  and  I  know  of  nothing  to  be 
found  elsewhere  that  is  a  more  remarkable  epi- 
tome of  the  whole  question  of  "Bird  Protection." 

"I  saw  with  open  eyes 
Singing  birds  sweet 
Sold  in  the  shops 
For  people  to  eat, 
Sold  in  the  shops  of 
Stupidity  Street. 

"I  saw  in  a  vision 
The  worm  in  the  wheat, 
And  in  the  shops  nothing 
For  people  to  eat; 
Nothing  for  sale  in 
Stupidity  Street." 

Here,  in  a  nut  shell,  is  the  whole  matter;  it  is 
stupid  to  kill  song  birds  for  food,  they  are  the 

1 60 


Stupidity  Street  161 

real  wardens  of  all  growing  things,  they  stand  be- 
tween the  worm  and  the  wheat  field;  kill  them  all 
and  there  will  be  nothing  for  sale  in  "Stupidity 
Street."  There  is  no  escaping  the  inference  of 
the  poem.  The  man  who  uses  a  song  bird  as  an 
animated  target,  destroying  an  insectivorous  bird 
for  a  tidbit  to  tickle  the  palate  of  a  would-be  epi- 
cure, may  not  be  a  criminal,  but  alas,  is  one  of  a 
multitude — all  of  whom  live  on  over-crowded 
"Stupidity  Street."  Follow  the  people  home  who 
are  guilty  of  wantonly  destroying  our  vanishing 
wild  life,  and  you  will  find,  with  scarcely  an  ex- 
ception, that  they  all  live  on  Stupidity  Street.  If 
I  were  a  devout  churchman,  I  would  suggest  this 
addition  to  the  Prayer  Book:  from  the  besotted 
ignorance  of  "Stupidity  Street,"  Good  Lord,  de- 
liver us. 

Here  is  a  very  sad  case ;  a  beautiful,  very  beau- 
tiful church,  to  which  the  waves  sing  their  finest 
battle  and  love  songs  and  the  leaves  of  the  Live- 
Oaks  tell  their  secrets,  and  wild-bird  singers  on 
the  outside  outrival  the  best  efforts  of  the  hu- 
man choirs  within,  and  the  church  is  called  "The 
Church  of  the  Redeemer."  There  is  a  Rectory 
and  a  Rector,  everything  quite  proper,  and  all 
located  on  Stupidity  Street — for  the  Holy  man  is 
a  killer  of  insectivorous  birds  and  no  voice  has 
been  raised  against  him  in  "The  Church  of  the  Re- 
deemer." If  the  man  of  God  does  not  know  that 


1 62     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

a  Dove  is  worth  more  to  agriculture  to-day  than 
for  sacrifice  in  the  old  days,  and  more  for  aesthetic 
reasons  than  for  pie,  he  should  go  to  school  again 
and  be  re-ordained. 

It  would  seem  that  the  church  whose  altars, 
through  dim,  dark  and  dreadful  ages  had  dripped 
with  the  blood  of  young  Pigeons  and  Doves  could 
do  no  less,  by  way  of  expiation  for  that  bloody 
past,  than  turn  all  the  power  of  its  efficient  organ- 
ization to  conserve  what  is  left  of  wild-life. 

The  sacred  part  of  a  temple  has,  of  late  years, 
become  associated  with  bird  protection — sacred- 
ness  like  a  thread  of  gold  clinging  to  our  tardy 
efforts  to  save  our  vanishing  wild  life.  Those 
enlisted  in  the  Grand  Army  of  Bird  Protection 
are  not  Crusaders,  struggling  to  rescue  from  the 
unbeliever  a  Holy  Sepulcher ;  they  are  the  Master 
Builders  for  the  coming  years  and  their  sanctu- 
aries will  be  filled  with  life  and  song: 

"Till  the  sun  grows  cold,  and  the  stars  grow  old 
And  the  leaves  of  the  judgment-book  unfold." 

He  who  builds  for  the  future,  struggling  to 
improve  conditions  affecting  all  the  people  for  all 
time,  is  engaged  in  the  only  holy  war  that  has 
ever  been  waged  in  the  history  of  mankind.  A 
stainless  soldier  is  the  one  who  fights  for  principle 
and  is  a  victor  glorified  compared  to  the  one 


Stupidity  Street  163 

whose  motives  are  sordid  or  corrupt.  The  "City 
of  Refuge"  and  the  "Horns  of  the  Altar"  are 
some  way,  more  or  less  closely  associated  with 
the  "Bird  Sanctuary,"  as  we  know  it  to-day.  It  is 
perfectly  wonderful  how  soon  the  wild  things 
come  to  know  where  they  are  safe.  When  a  mis- 
guided politician  in  my  own  county  had  an  open 
season  on  the  remnant  of  our  prairie  chickens — 
protected  for  years — the  amazed  and  terrified 
birds  collected  on  the  Maplewood  Audubon  Res- 
ervation— our  farm — and  walked  about  the  lawn 
like  domestic  chickens,  a  wounded  bird  com- 
ing with  the  rest,  and  actually  died  under  my 
office  window.  Only  the  other  day  a  beautiful 
golden  woodpecker,  having  been  shot  by  some 
miscreant,  came  back  to  our  Sanctuary  and  died 
upon  my  doorstep  and  the  blood  that  dripped 
from  step  to  step  cried  out  in  mute  protest  against 
the  evil  doer  who  kills  for  sport,  fixing  upon  him 
blood-guiltiness;  and  I  saw  the  stain  upon  my 
doorstep  magnified  into  a  stain  upon  the  land 
that  fails  to  prevent  the  shedding  of  innocent 
blood.  We  ask  nothing  less  than  America  as  a 
vast  Sanctuary  for  song  and  insectivorous  birds. 
That  there  is  no  difference  between  North  and 
South  except  in  the  matter  of  roasting  coffee  and 
whether  we  shall  have  cold  bread  or  hot  bis- 
cuit for  supper,  I  am  sorry  to  say  isn't  quite  true, 
for  there  is  a  custom  in  the  whole  South  of  shoot- 


1 64     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

ing  song  and  insectivorous  birds  that  goes  back 
to  the  first  settlement  of  the  country  and  the  pro- 
fessional man,  the  business  man  and  the  negro, 
with  his  three  dollar  gun,  are  all  defying  the  fed- 
eral law  and  are  active  as  ever  in  bird  destruction. 
Bird  protection  has  utterly  failed  to  get  the  moral 
support  of  the  best  people  in  even  fairly  pro- 
gressive cities  and  where  this  is  so,  what  can 
you  expect  of  lewd  fellows  of  the  baser  sort  in 
little  villages  and  back  country  places? 

Biloxi,  Mississippi,  long  a  winter  resort  for 
Northern  people,  ought  to  be  more  progressive 
than  the  average  city,  and  yet  after  five  winters  of 
persistent  work  for  bird  protection,  talking  in  all 
their  schools  and  writing  articles  for  the  city  pa- 
pers, I  am  frank  to  say  I  can  see  small  results. 
The  same  paper  that  published  my  protest  against 
killing  Mocking-birds,  published  a  vitriolic  re- 
joinder from  a  woman  who  attempted  to  justify 
the  killing  on  the  ground  that  she  preferred  straw- 
berries to  Mocking  birds.  Nothing  that  I  have 
ever  written  about  birds  has  been  refused  pub- 
lication in  city  papers  and  the  schools  clamor 
for  more  talks — they  could  not  be  worth  less  than 
they  cost — and  I  am  called  the  "Bird-man"  and 
"Bird's  Attorney"  and  my  acquaintance  with  the 
children  of  the  public  school  is  extensive,  but  I  am 
assured  by  good  lawyers  that  no  jury  would  con- 
vict were  I  to  have  a  person  arrested  for  viola- 


Stupidity  Street  165 

tion  of  the  Federal  law,  whatever  the  evidence 
against  the  prisoner. 

I  am  going  to  take  the  public  into  my  confidence 
and  say  that  the  lady  of  whom  we  have  rented 
apartments  for  the  last  five  years  is  a  good  friend 
and  I  felt  pretty  sure  that  I  had  made  one  con- 
vert when  she  had  her  ten-year-old  son,  last  win- 
ter, throw  away  his  air-gun,  but  on  our  return  in 
December  this  year,  I  found  she  had  given  him 
an  ante-Christmas  present  of  the  largest  and  best 
air-gun  on  the  market  and  he  and  his  little  chums 
were  killing  birds,  as  their  fathers  had  before 
them. 

There  are  exceptions  to  all  general  rules  but 
generally  speaking  so  far  as  economic  and  aesthetic 
appreciation  of  birds  go,  I  am  forced  to  locate 
even  my  friends  on  that  street  whose  name  is  the 
name  of  this  chapter.  On  this  point  I  want  to 
quote  from  an  account  of  a  brief  visit  to  an  in- 
terior town  twenty  miles  from  New  Orleans  where 
for  four  days  my  friend,  Creswell  J.  Hunt,  be- 
ginning on  February  2Oth,  1918,  took  a  bird  cen- 
sus. The  deep,  dark  and  awful  ignorance  that  he 
encountered — every  solitary  soul  living  on  Stu- 
pidity Street — is  almost  beyond  belief.  Here  is 
an  extract  from  his  report  that  speaks  for  itself. 
"While  the  residents  of  southern  Louisiana  seem, 
one  and  all,  to  have  a  great  affection  for  the  Mock- 
ing bird,  this  species  seems  to  be  about  the  only 


1 66     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

one  for  which  there  is  any  aesthetic  feeling.  Other 
birds  appeal  to  them  entirely  according  to  the 
quality  of  the  bird's  flesh  and  this  makes  the  work 
of  the  Department  of  Conservation  very  difficult 
in  enforcing  its  laws  for  the  protection  of  the  in- 
sectivorous birds.  These  people  have  shot  Robins 
and  Wood  Thrushes  and  Vireos  and  King-birds 
all  their  lives  and  it  is  difficult  to  explain  to  them 
why  they  should  stop  it  now,  and  still  harder  to 
keep  them  from  killing  these  birds.  Mr.  A.  E. 
Manint,  the  Department  of  Conservation's  agent 
in  St.  Tammany  Parish,  has  done  remarkably 
good  work  in  protecting  the  birds  in  his  terri- 
tory and,  at  the  same  time,  has  kept  the  good 
will  of  the  people.  He  has  been  diplomatic,  and 
from  what  I  saw,  it  appears  that  most  of  the 
people  like  him  and  respect  his  authority. 

"People  with  whom  I  talked  knew  the  birds 
by  local  names — to  me  entirely  new  names — and 
in  many  cases  it  was  difficult  to  tell  what  species 
they  were  talking  about  as  their  efforts  to  describe 
the  bird's  appearance  were  often  very  misleading. 
For  instance  they  told  me  that  I  should  be  there  a 
little  later  when  the  "Pops"  came.  Their  hand- 
somest bird,  they  said,  was  the  "Red  Pop,"  while 
the  "Blue  Pop,"  and  the  "Green  Pop"  were  also 
beauties.  I  later  found  that  their  "Red  Pop"  is 
the  male  Painted  Bunting  or  Nonpareil,  while 
their  "Green  Pop"  is  the  female  of  this  species. 


Stupidity  Street  167 

And  the  "Blue  Pop"  is  the  male  Indigo  Bunting. 

Then  they  told  me  about  the  "Big  Caille"— 
(pronounced  Big  Ki) — the  game  bird  par  ex- 
cellence— a  bird  that  feeds  upon  the  magnolia 
seeds;  a  bird  whose  flesh  some  of  the  most  famous 
French  chefs  had  pronounced  the  finest  eating  in 
the  world.  And  then  there  was  the  "Little  Caille" 
and  the  "Black  Caille,"  both  shot  along  with  the 
"Big  Caille,"  but  the  flesh  of  the  "Big  Caille" 
surpassed  them  all.  From  the  descriptions  given 
me  I  decided  that  this  "Big  Caille"  must  surely  be 
one  of  our  Thrushes,  and  I  later  found  this  to  be 
correct.  The  "Big  Caille" — the  most  famed  of 
all  the  game  birds — is  none  other  than  the  Wood 
Thrush.  I  have  always  heard  the  Wood  Thrush 
praised  but  never  from  this  standpoint.  I  have 
heard  the  Wood  Thrush  proclaimed  the  finest 
singer  in  North  America.  No  doubt,  with  us,  the 
species  ranks  foremost  in  aesthetic  value.  To 
many  of  us  Northerners,  it  is  indeed  the  bird  of 
birds.  It  is,  perhaps,  the  last  bird  we  would 
care  to  slaughter.  But  down  around  Mandeville, 
they  love  the  "Big  Caille" — when  browned  just 
right  and  served  upon  the  table.  And  there  is 
perhaps  more  hard  feeling  against  the  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  for  prohibiting  the  killing  of 
the  Wood  Thrush  than  there  is  about  the  protec- 
tion of  any  other  bird. 

The  Olive-backed  Thrushes  are  killed  under  the 


1 68     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

name  of  "Little  Caille"  and  the  Cat-bird,  under 
the  name  of  "Black  Caille." 

Louisiana  has  one  of  the  best  State  Conserva- 
tion Commissions,  but  I  am  a  great  believer  in  the 
long  arm  of  Uncle  Sam,  whose  officials  are  inde- 
pendent of  votes  and  in  spite  of  some  very  excel- 
lent work  done,  a  raid  the  other  day  gathered  in 
a  negro  with  a  barrel  of  pickled  Robins,  and  fif- 
teen whites,  among  them  deputy  sheriffs  and  busi- 
ness men.  Though  the  state  officers  do  their  best, 
no  one  in  that  bunch,  possibly  excepting  the  col- 
ored man,  will  get  a  fine  calculated  to  make  any 
one  sit  up  and  take  notice.  The  migratory  bird 
not  being  the  property  of  any  state  is  very  prop- 
erly the  ward  of  the  Federal  government  and  with 
all  possible  assistance  from  state  organizations, 
its  protection  must  be  brought  about  through  Na- 
tional intervention.  As  an  Irishman  might  say: 
"The  Western  Front  is  in  the  South"  for  the  great 
battle  to  make  the  whole  country  safe  for  song 
and  insectivorous  birds  will  be  fought  there  and 
efforts  to  conserve  and  protect  cannot  long  con- 
tinue when  one-half  the  territory  is  being  swept 
and  combed  by  hunters  who  kill  everything  that 
flies.  The  Street  must  be  taught  the  sweetness 
of  bird-song,  the  utter  shamefulness  of  robbing 
nature  of  her  most  beautiful  and  attractive  forms 
of  life,  for  in  exquisite  coloring  many  flowers  are 
wingless  birds  and  many  birds  only  winged  flowers, 


Stupidity  Street  169 

plus  their  song.  To  take  birds  out  of  poetry 
would  be  like  taking  tune  out  of  music, — noth- 
ing left  but  idiotic  jargon. 

Birds  are  poetry  per  se  and  cannot  be  replaced 
by  other  living  creatures  in  poems  where  they 
figure,  without  turning  fine  poetry  into  caricature. 
Here  is  the  proof  of  the  above  statement;  I  will 
first  give  Tennyson's  Poet  Song,  then  caricature 
it  by  simply  putting  an  animal  in  the  place  of  the 
bird. 

The  rain  had  fallen,  the  Poet  arose, 
He  pass'd  through  the  town  and  out  of  the  street; 
A  light  wind  blew  from  the  gates  of  the  sun 
And  waves  of  shadow  went  over  the  wheat, 
And  he  sat  him  down  in  a  lonely  place 
And  chanted  a  melody  loud  and  sweet, 
That  made  the  wild  swan  pause  in  her  cloud, 
And  the  lark  drop  down  at  his  feet. 

The  swallow  stopt  as  he  hunted  the  bee, 

The  snake  slipt  under  a  spray, 

The  wild  Hawk  stood  with  the  down  on  his  beak, 

And  stared,  with  his  foot  on  the  prey. 

And  the  nightingale  thought,  "I  have  sung  many 

songs, 

But  never  a  one  so  gay 
\For  he  sings  of  what  the  world  will  be 
When  the  years  have  died  away." 

Beginning  with  the  last  two  lines  of  the  first 
verse : 


170     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

That  made  the  wild  Ass  pause  in  her  race 
And  the  frog  drop  down  at  his  feet. 

The  old  bear  paused  as  he  hunted  the  bee, 
A  snake  slipped  under  a  spray 
And  a  rooster  stood  with  the  down  on  his  beak 
And  stared  with  his  foot  on  the  prey. 

The  Moo-cow  said,  "I've  lowed  many  a  song 
But  never  a  one  so  gay 
For  he  sings  of  what  the  world  will  be 
When  the  years  have  died  away." 

There  is  still  worse  caricature  than  this,  the 
worst  imaginable ;  instead  of  the  music  of  the  wild 
— the  choir  made  invisible  by  the  boughs  of  a  ven- 
erable brotherhood  of  trees,  you  send  skulking 
through  these  dream  haunted  shades,  the  man 
with  a  gun,  the  mean  brother  of  a  wolf  who  being 
able  to  comprehend  beauty,  destroys  it;  able  to 
comprehend  music,  seeks  to  silence  it  forever — 
let  us  pillory  forever  that  libel  on  God's  crea- 
tures. 

Let  me  whisper  it ;  the  people  on  the  Street  are 
ignorant, — deeply,  darkly,  densely  ignorant. 
They  don't  know  the  first  thing  of  the  laws  that 
govern  the  world  in  which  they  live  and  move 
and  have  their  being.  To  them  the  house  of  life 
has  not  only  had  the  shades  down  and  the  blinds 
closed,  but  it  has  been  barred  and  double  pad- 


Stupidity  Street  171 

locked.  Nobody  on  the  Street  has  sought  to  find 
a  key  where  it  is  to  be  found,  in  the  origin  of  life 
itself.  All  life  has  a  common  origin,  an  invisible 
cell — protoplasm.  Countless  billions  of  different 
creatures  live  on  the  earth,  in  the  water,  and  in 
the  air,  they  are  all  struggling  for  existence,  and 
each  uses  the  more  or  less  feeble  spark  of  intelli- 
gence implanted  within  it.  Now  there  is  not  a 
creature  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  the  huge  ele- 
phant and  the  tiny  aphis  that  destroys  a  rose  leaf, 
that  left  to  breed  unchecked  would  not  crowd 
everything  else  off  the  planet.  The  people  on  the 
Street  know  nothing  of  Nature's  marvelous  fer- 
tility and  power  of  reproduction.  The  human 
mind  staggers  in  attempting  to  grasp  this  appal- 
ling thing.  Linnaeus,  the  great  naturalist,  study- 
ing the  so-called  "plant  lice"  found  that  in  one 
year  a  single  aphis  would  produce  a  quintillion  of 
descendants.  How  do  you  write  a  quintillion 
using  the  English  method  of  enumeration?  Write 
the  figure  one  and  after  it  thirty  zeroes.  The  sec- 
ond year,  from  one  single  aphis  you  would  have  a 
number  of  descendants  that  to  represent,  you 
would  have  to  write  the  figure  one  and  sixty 
zeroes,  Thus  from  a  creature  so  small  that  you 
can  scarcely  see  it,  if  all  its  young  were  allowed  to 
live  and  breed,  in  a  very  short  time,  there  would 
pile  up  a  loathsome  mass  of  aphids  greater  in 
bulk  than  the  world  itself.  Malthus  was  right; 


172     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

all  forms  of  life,  unchecked,  breed  to  destructive 
numbers.  That  life  may  be,  all  forms  of  life 
must  be  held  in  check  by  their  natural  enemies. 
If  the  people  on  the  Street  knew  this  and  the  ad- 
ditional fact  that  the  bird  is  the  check  upon  the 
noxious  weed  and  noxious  insect,  they  would  con- 
serve rather  than  destroy.  It  is  worse  than  stupid 
to  kill  our  bird  friends  to-day — it  is  criminal. 
Whole  species  have  been  exterminated,  many 
others  are  on  the  verge  of  extermination,  and  all 
species  are  frightfully  depleted,  and  when  all  are 
gone,  life  itself  will  quickly  pass  with  the  flutter 
of  the  last  wing. 

Gone — This  little  word  of  four  letters  may  be 
compared  to  a  gray  wall  shutting  out  the  sunlight ; 
a  vast  desert,  where  life  has  been  and  is  not, — a 
desolation,  a  haunting  memory — the  sadness  of  an 
irreparable  loss.  There  is  the  sadness  of  fare- 
wells in  the  recollection  of  trackless  forests,  swept 
by  the  destroyer,  from  the  face  of  the  earth,  and 
with  them  so  many  of  the  wood-folk  have  gone 
forever.  The  cultivated  field,  the  populous  city, 
are  not  places  where  mother  nature  may  be  seen 
and  studied  at  her  best.  Sylvan  dells,  sweet  songs, 
gliding  dryads,  and  dancing  fairies  are  not  to  be 
found  along  the  desolation  of  paved  streets. 
Scores  of  the  dear  familiar  neighbors  of  my  child- 
hood are  gone  forever.  Across  the  dawn,  I  look 
in  vain  for  the  strong,  swift  sweep  of  countless 


Stupidity  Street  173 

wings.  The  great  flocks  have  gone  never  to  re- 
turn. This,  of  itself,  is  a  reason  for  conserving 
what  is  left,  gathering  up  the  fragments  and  pro- 
tecting them,  that  species  may  not  be  utterly  ex- 
terminated. 

Yesterday  we  were  all  for  slaughter,  but  we 
grow  frightened  to-day,  in  desolate  places  from 
which  teeming  life  has  gone,  and  the  hopeful  signs 
of  the  times  are  to  be  found  in  waves  of  bird  pro- 
tection and  bird  legislation  sweeping  the  land. 
Yesterday,  the  "Wild  life  refuge" — the  sanctuary, 
lived  only  in  the  imagination  of  a  few  dreamers; 
to-day  the  dream  has  come  true  and  the  people 
of  these  Sovereign  States  are  demanding  pre- 
paredness for  the  efficient  protection  of  the  piti- 
ful remnant  of  the  "Wild  Life"  before  all  is  for- 
ever gone. 

The  famous  French  publicist,  Emile  Boutroux, 
in  an  article  on  the  idealism  and  statesmanship 
of  President  Wilson,  gives  a  view  of  its  compre- 
hensiveness that  is  wonderful  and  I  know  of  noth- 
ing else  that  has  ever  been  written  that  could  be 
adapted  to  explain  my  notion  of  an  all-reaching 
bird  protection  that  will  protect.  Here  is  the 
quotation  above  referred  to:  "He  is,  above  all, 
desirous  of  thinking,  not  in  East-American  terms, 
nor  in  those  of  the  South,  the  West,  or  the  North, 
but  in  ail-American  terms.  His  idealism  combines 
what'the  diverse  populations  making  up  the  United 


174     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

States  have  together  contributed  to  the  national 
spirit;  the  Puritan  notion  of  duty  and  respon- 
sibility; the  generous  and  humane  democracy  of 
the  Mississippi  Valley;  the  independent,  equality- 
loving,  though  conservative,  spirit  of  the  South; 
and  the  practical  activity  of  them  all."  In  another 
place  he  says:  "It  was  not  the  will  of  an  indi- 
vidual, but  that  of  a  whole  people  which,  conscious 
of  its  ability  to  accomplish  any  end  submitted 
humbly  this  omnipotence  to  the  authority  of  the 
moral  law  and  of  the  ideal." 

In  bird  protection,  I  see  what,  in  effect,  will 
be  a  League  of  States — the  whole  preventing  any 
one  state  from  laying  violent  hands  upon  and  de- 
stroying what  is  the  property  of  all  the  states ; — 
bird-protection;  "Of  the  people,  by  the  people, 
for  the  people."  And  when  that  glad  day  dawns, 
"To  Rent"  will  be  in  every  window  on  "Stupidity 
Street." 


CHAPTER  XV 

JAYS  AND  CROWS 

By  common  consent  the  birds  whose  names 
stand  at  the  head  of  this  chapter  are  members  of 
a  most  disreputable  family  and  are  sure  enough 
undesirables  and  should  be  deported  to  that  ex- 
cessively hot  and  waterless  region  from  whence 
they  came.  It's  as  clear  as  mud  that  black  and 
blue  are  the  colors  of  assault  and  battery  and  as- 
sault and  battery  is  a  flourish,  common  way  down 
in  the  dregs  of  society,  where  laborers  fight  and 
drunken  brutes  whip  their  wives  and  eyes  are  deco- 
rated with  the  colors  of  the  Jay  and  the  Crow. 
Not  everything  can  be  allowed  in  the  best  so- 
ciety and,  it  will  scarcely  permit  the  bare  mention 
of  anything  so  coarse  and  common  and  Bolshevist 
as  blue  marauders  and  black  robbers.  Believing 
every  one  innocent  until  proved  guilty  is  reversed 
in  the  case  of  the  prisoners  at  the  bar,  who  are  re- 
quired to  prove  their  innocence  after  being  ar- 
rested on  suspicion  and  tried  before  prejudiced 
juries.  As  their  attorney,  though  without  a  re- 
tainer, I  shall  stand  upon  the  rights  of  my  clients 


176     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

to  a  separate  trial  and  to  summon  essential  wit- 
nesses at  any  cost  with  usual  adjournments  taken 
in  their  absence. 

If  the  court  please,  I  demand  the  dismissal  of 
the  case  on  two  points,  the  first  of  which  is  that 
there  is  no  evidence  of  guilt,  or  even  serious  mis- 
demeanor against  the  defendants,  and  the  second, 
that  the  plaintiffs  have  not  been  made  to  put  up 
security  for  costs. 

I  object,  Your  Honor,  to  excusing  the  plaintiffs 
from  the  usual  security  for  costs  as  it  establishes 
the  dangerous  principle  of  allowing  the  quarrel- 
some and  ignorant  a  free  hand  in  jeopardizing  the 
liberty  of  any  one  so  unfortunate  as  to  incur  their 
displeasure,  and  they  themselves  escape  all  re- 
sponsibility in  the  matter  at  issue. 

If  the  court  please,  we  will  proceed  to  examine 
the  allegations  in  the  complaint  against  the  Blue 
Jay.  Again,  Your  Honor,  I  ask  the  dismissal  of 
this  case  against  the  Jay  on  the  ground  that  every- 
thing in  the  complaint,  from  first  to  last  is  clearly 
dictated  by  prejudice,  based  upon  hearsay;  ob- 
servations of  the  blind  and  the  silly  drivel  of  the 
uninformed,  who  babble  to  hear  themselves  bab- 
ble. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Jury,  getting  a  single  kernel 
of  wheat  out  of  an  overflowing  bushel  of  chaff, 
constituting  an  alleged  complaint  against  my  client, 
let  us  proceed  to  examine  the  so  far  unproven 


Jays  and  Crows  177 

charge  that  the  Jay  is  a  notorious  nest  robber  and 
devourer  of  the  helpless  young  of  other  birds. 
As  this  is  a  case  based  upon  general  suspicion 
rather  than  a  specific  act  it  will  turn  upon  prov- 
ing the  previous  good  character  of  the  defendant, 
if  that  is  possible.  Now,  if  His  Honor  will  order 
me  sworn  I  will  take  the  witness  stand  on  be- 
half of  my  client,  who  has  been  a  close  friend  of 
mine  for  the  last  fifty  years.  Fifty  years,  Gen- 
tlemen of  the  Jury,  is  a  long  time  and  a  man  and 
a  bird  ought  to  get  to  know  something  of  each 
other  in  such  a  period,  and  had  I  not  flattered  my- 
self that  I  know  him  better  than  most  people  I 
would  not  have  volunteered  to  act  as  his  attorney 
in  this  case.  Certainly  I  will  not  stand  by  and 
see  him  wronged,  for  I  can  say  of  him,  what  I 
cannot  say  of  all  my  friends,  that  up  to  date  I 
never  knew  him  to  do  anything  unworthy  of  a 
gentleman  and  a  scholar. 

Our  acquaintance  started  on  a  cold  day  and  it 
has  been  getting  warmer  and  warmer  ever  since. 
I  saw  him  as  the  only  bit  of  blue  on  a  gray  winter 
day  and  he  scolded  and  laughed  at  me  by  turns, 
from  a  limb  of  the  "tip-top"  wood  that  consti- 
tuted our  first  wood-pile  and  made  me  ashamed 
to  cry  with  the  cold,  after  a  thirty  mile  ride,  as  I 
carried  in  my  first  armful  to  start  the  first  fire 
in  my  father's  log-cabin  that  stood  for  a  home 
in  the  wilderness.  Always  regarding  him  as  a 


178     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

gentleman  I  of  course,  never  asked  him  to  eat  out 
of  my  hand,  but  I  have  given  him  something  with 
a  stick  and  possibly  my  health  was  better  just 
afterward.  To  be  a  little  more  definite,  I  have 
handed  him  a  meal-worm  at  the  end  of  a  split 
stick  as  he  sat  on  the  edge  of  his  nest  after  a 
hard  day's  work  in  the  support  of  his  family  and 
I'll  swear  he  bowed  when  he  received  it,  and 
every  man  has  a  right  to  his  opinion  so  why  may 
I  not  be  allowed  to  believe  that  if  I  could  have 
translated  his  remark,  it  would  have  been:  "Your 
health,  old  duffer,  and  may  you  live  long  and  pros- 
per." 

Gentlemen  of  the  Jury,  I  am  not  trying  to  put 
anything  over  you  when  I  assure  you  that  this 
bird,  so  commonly  maligned  and  slandered,  is  in 
very  fact,  "my  friend  Yorick,  a  fellow  of  infinite 
jest  and  most  excellent  fancy"  and  it's  no  exag- 
geration to  say  that  I  had  much  rather  see  him 
on  any  single  day  in  the  three  hundred  and  sixty- 
five  than  a  book  agent  or  a  tax  collector  and  he 
would  be  twice  as  welcome,  if  he  saw  fit  to  make 
me  a  pastoral  call,  as  the  professional  Soul  Saver. 
Perhaps  he  may  be  shockingly  worldly,  but  a  fair- 
minded  man  knowing  him  in  his  domestic,  social 
and  civic  relations  to  life  could  scarcely  withhold 
at  least  a  small  measure  of  admiration.  The 
world  is  full  of  snivelers  who  are  not  willing  to 


Jays  and  Crows  179 

weep  alone  but  want  every  one  to  go  into  the  lawn 
sprinkler  business  with  them  and  along  comes  Mr. 
Jay  and  flaunts  his  sky  blue  in  their  faces  and 
says,  as  clearly  as  a  bird  can:  "Oh!  Patience 
don't  mention  it;  people  have  enough  of  that  with- 
out making  a  community  service  of  it  so  just  pack 
your  troubles  in  your  old  kit  bag  and  smile,  smile, 
smile." 

My  friend  Yorick  should  be  especially  dear 
to  the  heart  of  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox  for  he  laughs 
whether  the  world  laughs  with  him  or  not  and 
however  much  you  persecute  him  with  your  guns, 
traps,  poison,  he  is  now  and  always:  "O'er  all 
the  ills  of  life  victorious."  I  do  not  claim  that 
he  is  to  be  compared  to  a  "Yellow  prim-rose  on 
the  river's  brink"  so  far  as  a  poetic  uplift  goes, 
but  I  do  aver  that  in  my  heart  he  has  stirred: 
"Thoughts  that  do  lie  too  deep  for  words."  Oh! 
you  don't  like  his  shrill  unmusical  ear-splitting 
squawk.  I  do  not  blame  you  very  much,  but  I 
question  if  I  ever  heard  it  just  as  you  have.  It's 
the  noise  of  the  children  of  that  neighbor  whom 
you  do  not  like  that  is  especially  offensive;  the 
noise  of  your  own  children  may  sound  like  music. 
There  is  a  difference.  Then  we  must  reckon  with 
individual  taste.  Don't  misunderstand  me;  I'm 
not  putting  my  friend  Yorick  up  as  a  musical 
prodigy,  far  from  it.  As  a  singer  he  is  in  the  class 


i8o     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

with  the  Pea-cock  and  they  may  have  attended  the 
same  singing  school.  Nevertheless,  I'd  rather 
listen  to  forty  Jays  than  one  Hawaiian  Band. 

Years  and  years  ago,  when  I  was  an  officer  in 
the  Penitentiary  of  Wisconsin,  there  was  a  Jay 
there,  the  prisoner  of  a  prisoner  and  in  spite  of 
his  gloomy  surroundings  he  was  a  gay  rollicking 
fellow,  with  more  pranks  and  whimsies  than  a 
Parrot  or  a  Monkey.  It  was  a  matter  of  frequent 
comment  that  he  was  such  a  favorite  with  the  in- 
mates of  the  cell-house  where  he  was  kept  and  it 
was  generally  understood  that  when  prisoners 
hurled  curses  at  him,  they  were  compliments  in 
disguise,  for  they  all  recognized  that  his  shrill 
squawk  had  power  to  bring  to  them,  even  through 
barred  windows,  the  great  out  of  doors. 

I  never  listen  to  a  passionate  denunciation  of 
the  Jay,  generally  expressed  by  a  string  of  oppro- 
brious epithets,  a  few  laps  longer  than  the  moral 
law,  without  being  reminded  of  the  quarrel  be- 
tween a  couple  of  negro  boys;  when  one  had 
hurled  at  the  other  every  obnoxious  term  he  could 
think  of,  the  one  assailed  quietly  remarked,  "All 
you  say  I  am,  you  is."  You  think  the  Jay  a 
thief  and  a  robber,  well  he  returns  your  sentiment 
plus  a  distrust  of  you,  in  all  your  ways,  unequalled 
by  anything  in  the  bird  kingdom.  Don't  be  de- 
ceived by  the  fact  that  he  is  not  wild,  that  is  ex- 
plained by  the  further  fact  that  he  is  not  afraid 


Jays  and  Crows  1 8 1 

of  you  and  though  he  builds  his  nest  near  your 
home,  he  never  relaxes  his  belief  that  you  will  do 
him  a  mischief  if  you  get  a  chance.  Try  to  feed 
him  and  you  will  see  just  how  much  he  believes 
in  your  benevolence.  He  will  swoop  down  and 
snatch  some  of  the  offered  food,  but  it  is  frankly 
the  act  of  one  robber  robbing  another  robber  and 
not  the  act  of  a  friend  receiving  a  gift  from  an- 
other friend. 

It  was  a  proud  day  in  my  life  when  after  a  thou- 
sand failures  a  Jay  allowed  me  to  give  him  some- 
thing. I  well  remember  how  I  smiled  all  over 
and  asked  him  to  come  around  and  drink  tea  with 
me  that  evening.  He  excused  himself,  but  we  got 
to  be  real  chums  and  our  relations  were  cordial 
if  not  exactly  intimate.  What  an  interesting  vaga- 
bond he  was.  My  old  Collie  dog,  Lobo,  was  old 
and  stricken  in  years  and  the  dinner  given  him 
was  often  beyond  his  capacity  and  he  would  lie 
down  in  the  sun  outside  the  kitchen  door  and 
straightway  go  to  sleep  on  guard,  for  which  of 
course,  according  to  military  law,  he  should  have 
been  shot  at  sunrise,  but  he  was  not  stood  up 
against  a  wall  and  so  Yorick,  not  wanting  him  to 
go  scot  free  for  such  a  lapse  from  the  obvious 
line  of  duty,  took  the  occasion  to  rob  him  of  the 
remainder  of  the  badly  guarded  dinner.  After 
which  he  would  perch  himself  on  a  nearby  stair- 
way, just  out  of  the  sleeper's  reach  and  proceed 


1 82     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

to  whistle  till  the  foolish  old  dog  waking  out  of 
sleep  would  charge  the  robber  whose  spirit  of  mis- 
chief was  beyond  question. 

None  of  his  bird  neighbors  either  fear  or  dis- 
like the  Jay  and  his  veracity  is  never  questioned. 
He  most  fittingly  is  dressed  in  blue  for  he  is  the 
real  police-man  of  the  bird  kingdom  and  is  always 
on  his  job.  Just  let  an  owl,  making  a  night  of  it, 
resolve  that  he  won't  go  home  till  the  day  after 
and  he  can't  hide  himself  on  the  lawn  so  the  Jay 
will  not  spy  him  out  and  call  all  the  race  of  birds 
to  mobilize  against  a  common  Hun,  and  Chateau 
Thierry,  in  a  small  way  is  reenacted  under  the 
leadership  of  a  sure  enough  American  general. 
Take  your  gun  and  dog  and  start  to  the  woods 
for  a  day's  hunt  and  a  certain  blue-coated  guard- 
ian of  the  forests  gets  there  ahead  of  you  and 
goes  slipping  through  the  tree-tops,  warning  all 
wood  folk  of  the  coming  of  man,  the  most  de- 
structive of  all  animals. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Jury,  I  put  this  up  to  you  to 
pass  upon  the  probability  of  a  real  criminal  en- 
joying the  confidence  and  respect  of  his  neighbors, 
having  a  reputation  for  veracity  never  questioned 
and  a  reputation,  among  those  who  know  him  best, 
as  something  of  a  philanthropist  in  rendering  help 
to  the  needy.  On  the  question  of  nest  robbing,  I 
might  assure  you  that  I  have  known  a  Jay  and  a 
Robin  to  bring  up  their  broods  at  the  same  time,  in 


Jays  and  Crows  183 

the  same  tree  and  the  tree  not  a  large  one  at 
that;  but  according  to  the  old  saying  that  one 
blue-bird  does  not  make  Spring,  so  a  single  in- 
stance is  far  from  being  conclusive  in  the  establish- 
ment of  any  allegation. 

Now  if  the  court  please,  I  will  introduce  here, 
marked  Exhibit  A,  a  scientific  examination  of 
the  stomachs  of  two  hundred  and  ninety-two  Jays, 
killed  in  the  breeding  season,  in  almost  every  state 
in  the  Union,  the  work  being  under  the  direction 
of  the  Biological  Survey  in  Washington.  The 
results  are  certainly  astonishing  and  probably  to 
no  one  more  than  the  amateurish  investigators 
and  hear-say  mongers  bringing  this  action.  Out 
of  the  whole  number  of  investigations  made  it 
was  found  that  only  five  could  have  been  guilty 
of  anything  like  nest  robbing.  Three  contained 
fragments  of  shell;  one  undoubtedly,  that  of  a 
smaller  bird;  another  stomach  had  a  fragment  of 
shell  that  might  or  might  not  have  been  that  of 
a  domestic  fowl,  and  the  third  seemed  to  be  a 
fragment  of  the  shell  of  a  grouse.  Two  stomachs 
contained  remains  of  birds.  One  the  undoubted 
fragment. of  the  body  of  a  small  bird  recently 
hatched ;  the  other  stomach  had  in  it  the  feet  and 
claws  of  a  fully-mature  bird,  variety  unknown. 

Now  Gentlemen  of  the  Jury,  let  us  go  back  and 
weigh  and  estimate  this  evidence  of  guilt,  and  I 
think  we  will  find  that  it  will  furnish  precious  little 


1 84     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

comfort  to  the  plaintiffs  bringing  this  case.  With 
regard  to  the  shells  found  in  the  stomachs,  in  all 
fairness  the  one  that  resembled  the  shell  of  a 
hen's  egg  should  be  excluded  as  it  is  a  well-known 
fact  that  such  a  fragment  is  often  thrown  out 
from  back  doors,  where  Jays  come  to  look  for 
scraps,  especially  before  people  are  up  in  the 
morning.  In  one  of  the  two  remaining  cases  the 
shell  was  thought  to  be  that  of  a  grouse,  found 
late  in  August,  long  after  their  nesting  season. 
No  evidence  of  nest  robbing  in  that  find.  The 
third  was  the  shell  of  a  song  bird,  but  in  the 
breeding  season  all  birds  drop  eggs  on  the  ground 
every  where  and  it  is  to  be  questioned  if  it  had 
ever  been  in  a  nest.  With  regard  to  the  frag- 
ments of  birds  found  in  the  stomach,  one  was  a 
part  of  a  nestling,  but  there  is  no  proof  that  it  was 
either  killed  or  taken  from  a  nest  by  my  client, 
for  even  people  who  have  next  to  no  knowledge  of 
birds  or  bird  life,  know  that  young  birds  some- 
times die  in  the  nest  from  various  causes  and  the 
first  thing  that  the  mother  would  be  likely  to  do 
would  be  to  throw  it  out  of  the  nest,  where  any- 
thing might  pick  it  up,  although  no  nest  robber. 

With  regard  to  the  last  and  final  examination, 
it  furnishes  no  proof  of  wrong-doing  upon  the 
part  of  a  Jay,  for  it  is  clearly  evidence  of  the 
wrong-doing  of  a  cat,  the  fragments  clearly  be- 
ing the  remains  of  a  cat's  supper.  Gentlemen  of 


Jays  and  Crows  185 

the  jury,  the  analysis  of  this  evidence  spells  ac- 
quittal for  my  client.  Only  two  out  of  two  hun- 
dred and  ninety-two  who  could  by  any  stretch  of 
circumstantial  evidence  have  been  guilty  of  nest 
robbing,  as  charged.  Here  we  rest  our  case ;  sim- 
ply warning  you  that  anything  brought  forward 
by  the  plaintiffs  will  surely  turn  out  to  be  incom- 
petent, irrelevant  and  immaterial,  and  not  evi- 
dence. 

Having  now  established  the  fact,  as  I  think, 
that  my  friend  Yorick  is  true  blue,  I  take  up  the 
case  of  his  cousin,  the  Crow,  with  confidence  and 
high  hopes  of  securing  justice  for  a  worthy  citizen. 

If  the  court  please,  this  second  defendant  in 
the  general  indictment  found  against  Jays  and 
Crows,  will  have  to  be  defended  along  lines  al- 
ready brought  forward  in  the  defence  of  the  Jay, 
and  I  herewith  demand  the  discharge  of  my  client 
on  the  ground  that  no  State  can  have  jurisdiction 
in  the  life,  liberty  and  pursuit  of  happiness  of  a 
bird  that  is  not,  so  to  speak,  the  citizen  of  a 
State  but  the  ward  of  the  Nation.  As  my  motion 
is  refused,  Your  Honor,  we  may  as  well  proceed 
to  trial.  Again  I  wish  to  be  sworn  and  put  upon 
the  stand  as  the  first  witness. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Jury,  is  it  not  an  astonishing 
fact  that  good  citizens  who  have  conscientious 
scruples  against  painting  the  devil  blacker  than  he 
really  is  have  no  scruples,  conscientious  or  other- 


1 86     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

wise,  against  painting  my  client  blacker  than  he 
is,  and  even  blacker  than  the  devil. 

I  honestly  cannot  tell  just  when  and  where  it 
was  that  I  met  my  first  Crow;  I  am,  however 
quite  certain  that  it  was  not  at  a  conservatory 
of  music  and  it  might  have  been  at  the  obsequies 
of  man's  noble  friend,  the  horse.  Perhaps  the 
way  he  sticks  around  after  what  has  been  done  to 
exterminate  him  may  be  traced  to  this  same  habit 
of  getting,  so  to  speak,  the  first  chance  at  the 
glue  pot.  Being  an  undertaker's  apprentice,  it 
is  fitting  that  he  should  wear  black  and  eschew 
frivolity  of  all  kinds;  a  sad  bird,  indeed,  if  sad- 
ness is  to  be  accentuated  by  a  customary  suit  of 
solemn  black.  Strongly  social  by  nature,  some 
think  he  has  a  language,  and  if  that  is  so,  per 
adventure  he  gossips  or  talks  shop. 

Leaving  the  domain  of  conjecture  and  coming 
into  that  of  fact,  it  may  be  averred  that  no  other 
bird  has  been  the  victim  of  so  much  prejudice, 
perjury  and  piffle.  Pre-judgment  is  the  forming 
of  an  opinion  before  you  are  in  possession  of  the 
facts  in  the  case  and  such  an  opinion  once  adopted 
is  frequently  held  with  the  utmost  tenacity  when 
facts  are  presented  calculated  to  overthrow  your 
pre-judgment.  Sentiment,  dislike,  love,  hatred, 
rarely  have  a  foundation  of  fact  and  you  can  do 
no  more  to  change  them  by  pelting  them  with  facts 
than  you  could  drive  away  a  fog  by  throwing 


Jays  and  Crows  187 

stones  at  it.  The  Jay  and  the  Crow  are  hated 
because  they  are  believed  to  be  bad  birds;  show 
them  to  be  good  members  of  the  bird  kingdom 
and  many  people  will  not  change  their  dislike  of 
them  an  iota. 

"I  do  not  like  you  Dr.  Fell, 

The  reason  why  I  cannot  tell, 
This  single  fact  I  know  full  well, 
I  do  not  like  you  Dr.  Fell." 

Just  as  the  mind  crowds  the  unknown  with  fool- 
ish superstitions,  so  we  endow  what  we  dislike 
with  every  detestable  quality  that  the  imagination 
can  conjure  up  and  this  is  the  human  quality  that 
has  conceived  of  total  depravity  as  a  condition 
not  uncommon.  We  use  the  Crow  as  a  unit  of 
measure  in  estimating  conditions  of  blackness,  and 
as  black  as  a  Crow  is  superlative.  He  is  a  bird 
belonging  to  the  realm  of  uncreated  night,  mys- 
terious, probably  devilish.  This  belief  was  clearly 
in  the  mind  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  when  he  wrote  of 
the  Raven,  the  Crow's  first  cousin :  "And  his  eyes 
have  all  the  seeming  of  a  demon  that  is  dream- 
ing." Now  in  spite  of  all  this  the  Crow  is  not 
as  black  as  painted,  and  there  are  even  white 
Crows. 

What  lies  have  been  told  about  him,  by  people 
who  never  meant  to  lie,  and  the  lie  in  combina- 
tion with  printer's  ink  has  made  a  fine  mechanical 
mixture  for  the  dissemination  of  falsehood.  A 


1 88     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

dear,  old  grandmother,  with  three  grandsons  over 
in  France  helping  make  the  world  safe  for  Democ- 
racy, and  a  woman  who  would  not  intentionally 
misrepresent,  told  and  it  got  mixed  with  printer's 
ink,  too,  that  she  saw  a  wicked,  black  Crow  steal 
and  carry  away  a  clutch  of  fifteen  hen's  eggs.  It 
was  not  stated  just  how  he  carried  the  eggs,  so 
you  are  at  liberty  to  make  a  guess  whether  it  was 
with  claws  or  in  his  bill. 

Again,  a  very  honorable  citizen,  an  official 
member  in  a  rural  church,  stated  that  he  saw,  and 
this  got  mixed  with  printer's  ink,  too,  a  wicked 
black  Crow — as  black  as  ever  Crows  can  be — 
carry  away  a  whole  brood  of  baby  chicks,  one  by 
one,  in  his  talons.  And  taking  the  public  into 
his  confidence,  he  lapses  into  a  reminiscence  of  a 
barn-building  that  he  carried  on  for  a  brother- 
in-law,  way  back  in  the  early  settlement  of  Wis- 
consin, and  having  to  walk  through  a  woods  to 
get  to  his  work,  carried  his  gun  and  without  loss 
of  time  kept  his  family  table  supplied  with  Grouse. 
These  birds,  according  to  the  statement,  were  so 
plentiful  and  tame  that  he  sometimes  got  a  mess 
on  a  rainy  day  shooting  from  the  windows  of  the 
barn.  At  the  close  of  his  valuable  contribution 
to  natural  history,  he  solemnly  avers  that  since 
that  time  the  Grouse  have  been  practically  exter- 
minated by  the  nest-robbing  Crow,  possibly  a 
Crow  with  talons. 


Jays  and  Crows  189 

To  my  certain  knowledge  a  Grouse  had  her 
nest  on  the  ground,  in  part  of  an  old  tree-top 
blown  from  a  giant  white-oak  and  in  that  oak  a 
Crow  had  her  nest  and  the  bad  nest-robbing  Crow 
never  molests  the  eggs  or  callow  young  of  her 
nearby  neighbor.  And  I  have  a  hen-house  on  the 
edge  of  a  big  woods  where  Crows  have  nested  for 
the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  but  to  the  best  of 
my  knowledge  and  belief,  no  egg  or  young  chicken 
has  ever  been  disturbed.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
no  Crow  could  possibly  carry  away  a  hen's  egg, 
and  they  have  no  talons.  So  far  as  I  know  they 
prefer  their  game  and  meat  a  little  high.  The 
Crow  being  a  bird  of  uncanny  intelligence,  super- 
natural cunning,  seeing  and  hearing  everything 
going  on  in  his  neighborhood ;  no  nest  could  be  hid- 
den and  none  would  escape  if  he  made  a  business 
of  robbing  them.  According  to  the  Scotch  verdict, 
the  charge  against  him  is :  "Not  proven." 

Now  the  farmers'  charge  against  him  is  not  as 
a  nest  robber,  so  much  as  a  corn  puller;  pulling 
the  young  corn  when  it  first  comes  up.  It  would 
be  folly  to  allow  my  client  to  plead  not  guilty  to 
this  charge,  for  it  happens  to  be  true.  In  certain 
localities  and  under  certain  conditions,  the  Crow 
develops  an  appetite  for  the  well-soaked,  soft  and 
mushy  germinating  kernel,  and  damages  the  com- 
ing crop.  Some  years  he  pulls  no  corn,  and  in 
some  States  he  is  a  pest  and  not  in  others,  and  the 


190     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

damage  he  does  is  insignificant  compared  to  his 
destruction  of  the  June  Beetle,  the  parent  of  the 
frightfully  destructive  White  Grub.  The  Crow 
may  take  a  few  hills,  but  the  Grub  will  take  the 
entire  field.  There  is  something  almost  ridicu- 
lous in  the  devices  advocated  to  trap  the  June 
Beetle ;  flickering  lights  and  tubs  filled  with  water 
and  kerosene,  the  light  to  attract,  the  mixture  to 
drown,  and  the  great  Agricultural  Schools  advo- 
cating the  "Light  Water  Trap,n  does  not  seem 
to  have  thought  of  giving  the  Crow,  the  Beetle's 
natural  enemy,  a  chance.  Later  on  we  may  be 
told  to  go  after  the  June  Bug  with  machine  guns, 
bombing  air-planes  and  gas  shells,  and  at  the  same 
time  continue  the  bounty  on  Crows.  Piffle, 
wretched  piffle. 

Serious  consequences  follow  tampering  with 
Nature's  balance.  Men,  to  preserve  the  teem- 
ing finny  tribes  that  abounded  in  the  four  great 
rivers  that  empty  their  waters  into  Mississippi 
Sound  at  Biloxi,  went  ahead  and  killed  the  Alli- 
gators that  also  abounded,  and  the  result  was 
the  vast  multiplication  of  the  Alligator  Gar-fish, 
upon  which  the  Alligator  fed  in  such  numbers  that 
it  speedily  destroyed  most  of  the  game  fish. 

Hawks,  Owls,  Jays  and  Crows  have  been 
slaughtered,  things  useful  and  beneficial  in  the 
scheme  of  Nature  to  the  great  detriment  of  grow- 
ing crops  for  the  removal  of  their  natural  enemies 


Jays  and  Crows  191 

allowed  pests  and  vermin  to  multiply  and  the  bal- 
ance of  Nature  has  been  disturbed.  A  lady  said 
to  me  the  other  day,  half  petulantly,  "If  you 
seriously  defend  Jays  and  Crows  I  would  not  be 
surprised  to  hear  you  demand  protection  for 
Snakes  and  Skunks,"  I  made  answer,  "I  am  sur- 
prised that  you  have  not  heard  that  I  have  been 
demanding  protection  for  both,  for  more  than 
twenty  years." 

Gentlemen  of  the  Jury,  that  farmer  is  only  once 
removed  from  a  fool  who  demands  physical 
beauty  and  the  ability  to  either  sing  or  whistle 
from  everyone  in  his  employ.  If  he  does  his 
work  and  does  it  well,  he  should  be  protected  and 
reasonably  remunerated,  quite  independent  of 
how  he  strikes  our  fancy.  The  public  press,  the 
rostrum,  the  pulpit,  and  a  great  commission,  and 
even  blank  walls,  have  been  shouting  to  us  for 
months  that  FOOD  WILL  WIN  THE  WAR.  The  les- 
son is  obvious;  everyone  was  to  unite  in  conserv- 
ing it,  why  not  allow  the  bird  to  keep  it  from  the 
destruction  of  swarming  myriads  of  Hun  insects 
and  rodents.  Hunger  is  a  monster,  disregarding 
every  law,  it  can  make  a  cannibal  out  of  the  flower 
of  our  highest  civilization,  and  neither  Jay  nor 
Crow  nor  human  creature  is  to  be  punished  for 
what  they  are  driven  to  by  starvation. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Jury,  I  demand  acquittal  for 
the  Crow  as  I  did  for  the  Jay;  on  the  ground  that 


192     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

there  was  no  cause  for  action.  And  with  this 
anecdote  I  rest  my  case.  Many  years  ago,  in  a 
country  church,  a  tame  Crow  flew  into  the  build- 
ing and,  lighting  on  the  sounding  board  of  a 
half  century  ago,  interrupted  the  evening  revival 
by  croaking  out  from  the  gloom  that  concealed 
him  from  all  eyes,  when  the  good  man  was  mak- 
ing the  opening  prayer:  "Damn  you,"  and  again, 
"Damn  you,"  and  so  he  kept  it  up  till  human 
nature  could  not  stand  it  and,  seized  with  super- 
stitious fear,  the  Reverend  man  and  the  entire  con- 
gregation fled,  with  the  exception  of  one  old 
woman,  who  recognized  that  it  was  a  tame  crow 
talking.  And  when  he  kept  on  with  his  maledic- 
tions after  the  two  were  alone,  she  with  some 
natural  ire,  shook  her  finger  in  the  direction  of 
the  voice  and  said,  "See  here,  Billy,  you  hain't 
got  no  occasion  to  damn  me,  for  I  don't  belong 
to  this  church  no  how." 

Whether  I  win  or  lose,  I  some  way  feel  that 
I  have  at  least  earned  the  right  of  exemption 
from  the  malediction  of  a  tame  Crow,  for  I  do 
not  belong  "no  how"  to  that  vast  company  of 
superstitious,  uninformed,  avaricious  tillers  of  the 
soil  who  seek  his  life,  to  take  it  away. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

BIRDS'  COURTSHIP  AND  MARRIAGE 

Some  cynic  has  said  that  matrimony  among  up- 
to-date  people  is  a  necessary  preliminary  to  ali- 
mony. This  cannot  be  true  of  our  bird  neigh- 
bors, but  they  have  their  preliminaries  also,  and 
some  of  them  more  or  less  exciting  and  even 
weird. 

Generally  speaking,  we  know  so  little  of  birds 
that  it  may  seem  a  good  deal  like  presumption  to 
write  of  their  personal  and  most  intimate  rela- 
tions. Still  we  know  more  of  the  courtship  of 
some  birds  than  that  of  the  soldier  and  his  girl 
clinging  together  on  the  street,  and  more  of  their 
marital  woes  than  we  know  of  the  unhappy  tri- 
angles of  the  divorce  courts.  Man — "the  roof 
and  crown  of  things" — a  little  lower  than  the 
angels,  stuff  and  nonsense,  is  not  to  be  compared, 
in  devotion  and  constancy,  with  his  bird  neighbors. 
The  stones  that  have  been  thrown  at  birds,  since 
time  began,  had  better  have  been  thrown  at  man 
if  he,  in  his  smug  superiority,  were  capable  of  tak- 
ing a  rebuke. 

'93 


194     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

The  human  race  today  is  something  turned  out 
of  a  melting  pot,  cannibal  and  patrician,  with  all 
grades  between  producing  mongrel  tribes  cover- 
ing the  earth.  The  bird,  free  to  follow  its  own 
nature,  produces  neither  'hybrids  nor  mongrels. 
Think  of  it,  a  thousand  ducks  migrating  together, 
nesting  together,  and  never  a  cross-bred  bird; 
birds  are  always  and  everywhere,  true  to  species. 
Do  you  begin  to  feel  the  rebuke  of  it?  Is  their 
conduct  or  man's  the  most  astonishing? 

A  few  years  ago  I  closed  the  bathing  season 
at  Green  Lake  by  accidentally  going  into  the  water 
in  a  successful  effort  to  get  a  wild  duck  out  alive 
that  was  being  frozen  into  the  ice,  being  unable 
to  fly  owing  to  a  broken  wing.  He  was  taken 
home  and  put  in  a  pen  of  Pekin  ducks,  eleven 
females  and  one  drake,  and  this  drake  was  acci- 
dentally killed  by  a  playful  colt,  when  the  flock 
crawled  under  the  fence  into  the  horse  yard.  This 
left  Mr.  Green-headed  Mallard  in  sole  possession 
of  a  snug  little  harem  of  his  own.  Talk  of  peas 
in  a  pod,  those  white  ducks  looked  exactly  alike 
and  yet  only  one  appealed  to  the  little  stranger 
from  the  wild.  The  courtship  is  a  sealed  book, 
or  was  it  not  made  into  a  book  as  is  so  common; 
about  the  only  thing  I  am  certain  of  is  that  it 
was  carried  on  late  at  night,  which  may  be  the 
only  thing  certainly  human  about  it. 

We  first  became  sure  of  their  marriage,  seeing 


Birds'  Courtship  and  Marriage         195 

them  together  in  the  opaline  light  of  an  April 
dawn.  To  quote  from  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox's 
"Birth  of  the  Opal''  perhaps:  "The  dying  day 
was  their  priest."  "For  this  cause,"  says  the  old 
marriage  service,  "a  man  shall  leave  his  father 
and  mother,  and  shall  cleave  unto  his  wife,  and 
they  shall  be  one  flesh."  Now  this  is  as  true  of 
ducks  as  of  humans,  and  as  true  of  Mrs.  Hen  as 
of  Mr.  Drake.  In  the  case  in  hand,  she  did  the 
cleaving;  leaving  her  family  and  following  her 
uncivilized  husband  to  a  nearby  island,  where  she 
performed  the  duties  of  wife  and  missionary  to 
the  heathen,  at  one  and  the  same  time. 

During  the  long-drawn-out  period  of  incuba- 
tion her  family  were  more  or  less  devoted,  mak- 
ing frequent  calls  when  they  were  swimming  by, 
and  who  knows,  aunts  and  cousins  and  even  sis- 
ters may  have  asked  the  family's  new  member  to 
take  a  little  swim  with  them,  but  he  never  did.  He 
surely  looked  lonesome  as  he  swam  back  and  forth 
in  the  lagoon  near  the  nest  and  I  am  certain  he 
was;  and  my  six-year-old  granddaughter  dubbed 
him  Dr.  Mally  because  he  did  so  much  quacking. 
How  "Mally"  caught  the  spirit  of  our  civiliza- 
tion, heaven  only  knows.  I  am  dealing  in  facts, 
not  psychology,  and  it  is  a  fact  that  the  very  next 
year  he  had  five  white  wives  and  two  gray  ones, 
and  his  name  should  have  been  changed  to  Lot. 

The  aimless  Puckyan  is  a  stream  so  crooked 


196     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

that  it  has  been  told  that  an  explorer  seeking  its 
outlet,  it  never  had  an  inlet,  followed  its  winding 
course  through  more  S's  than  are  in  the  name  of 
the  State  of  Mississippi ;  and  tied  up  his  boat  and 
stayed  all  night  at  a  farmhouse  on  a  bend,  and 
after  paddling  all  the  next  day,  tied  up  his  boat 
and  stayed  the  next  night  at  the  same  house, 
never  having  gotten  out  of  sight  of  it.  The  lan- 
guid little  river,  a  river  that  never  grew  up,  mean- 
ders somewhere  in  the  uBig  Marsh."  The  owner 
of  the  house  at  the  bend,  Mr.  Wiselander,  came 
back  from  the  Big  Marsh  one  late  September 
afternoon  with  a  high  load  of  hay  and  a  baby 
Sand-Hill  Crane,  the  longest-legged  bird  that  ever 
wet  its  ankles  in  the  deep  places  of  the  Puckyan. 
When  he  first  saw  it  he  got  a  notion  that  it  wanted 
to  catch  a  ride  and  there  was  no  waiting  for  a 
second  invitation  to  come  along  and  take  pot  luck 
at  the  farmhouse,  not,  however,  the  usual  pot 
luck  given  birds.  This  strangely  tame  creature 
from  the  wild  was  soon  at  home  at  the  farm  and 
spent  its  time  taking  bird's-eye  views  of  terrestrial 
things.  How  it  spent  the  winter  looking  down 
on  the  woolly  creatures  that  some  way  got  their 
noses  into  a  big  barn  that  had  been  assigned  to 
a  star  boarder,  are  matters  to  be  passed  over  in 
well-bred  silence.  Neither  have  I  time  to  tell  of 
his  possession  of  a  prudent  mind,  like  Mrs.  John 
Gilpin,  a  mind  that  would  not  allow  the  daughter 


Birds'  Courtship  and  Marriage         197 

of  the  house  to  bury  perfectly  good  tulip  bulbs, 
and  forced  him  to  resurrect  the  same  and  store 
them  away  for  future  use. 

Jumping  many  attractive  little  hurdles,  so  to 
speak,  just  turn  your  opera  glasses  upon  Mr.  S. 
Hill  Crane  and  myself  as  in  the  soft  Spring 
weather  we  turn  our  unequal  steps  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  Big  Marsh,  he,  in  pursuit  of  experience 
and  I,  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge.  We  both  got 
what  we  went  for;  he  got  a  wife  and  I,  knowledge 
of  what  it  means  to  be  best  man  at  a  high-up 
wedding.  It  was  both  an  old  and  a  new  cam- 
paign, but  no  listening  post  was  needed ;  you  could 
not  even  escape  the  soft  nothings  he  whispered 
to  the  South  wind  before  she  paused  in  her  cloud, 
as  though  saying  to  herself,  "Why  not  a  little 
home  of  my  own  close  to  the  gushing  heart  of  the 
Big  Marsh  ?" 

Not  all  lunatics  are  lovers,  but  all  lovers  are 
lunatics,  and  the  crazy  things  that  fool  bird  did 
I  am  afraid  to  tell  for  I  am  not  sure  whether  I 
saw  things  or  dreamed  them.  It's  easier  to  think 
that  I  really  got  what  I  am  about  to  tell  from 
"Alice  in  Wonderland"  than  from  the  Big  Marsh, 
where  my  father  used  to  buy  standing  grass  for 
fifty  cents  an  acre,  when  I  was  a  boy.  A  good 
wife  always  comes  at  your  call  and  as  she  came 
at  his  from  the  first,  I  knew  what  kind  of  a  wife 
she  was  going  to  be.  He  had  no  claim  check  upon 


198     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

her  when  she  first  put  in  an  appearance,  while  she 
had  a  stop-over  and  was  just  looking  around  a 
little.  On  close  inspection  the  Big  Marsh  was  a 
trifle  flatter  than  she  had  supposed,  and  she 
preened  her  left  wing  and  waved  her  right  one  as 
though  for  immediate  flight.  It  was  now  or  never. 
Doubtless  you  are  saying  he  will  show  her  what 
a  swift  flyer  he  is,  how  fast  he  can  run,  how  many 
frogs  he  can  catch  in  an  eight-hour  day;  perish 
the  thought. 

The  crazy  jumping-jack  knows  the  way  to  the 
feminine  heart,  the  battle  is  not  to  the  strong,  nor 
the  race  to  the  swift,  any  more  certainly  than  is 
the  dance,  the  last  argument  of  lovers.  Ghost  of 
a  cotillion  of  wooden-horses,  minuet  of  a  Hippo- 
potamus, five-step  waltz  of  a  Giraffe  and  Kanga- 
roo; S.  Hill  Crane  has  you  all  beaten  to  a  frazzle. 
However,  nothing  succeeds  like  success,  and  those 
graceful  gyrations  of  his  do  the  business,  and 
according  to  the  long-established  usage  of  the  con- 
ventional novel,  I  should  merely  add:  and  they 
married  and  lived  happily  ever  afterward,  but  I 
want  to  say  that  he  who  went  forth  in  the  Spring 
alone,  returned  in  the  Fall  with  joy,  bringing  a 
wife  and  heir  with  him. 

Life  is  such  a  tangled  skein,  the  bitter  and  sweet 
co-mingled,  before  spring  the  silly  sheep  had  tram- 
pled the  life  out  of  his  wife,  and  the  winter  wind 
slammed  a  door,  breaking  the  neck  of  his  son. 


Birds'  Courtship  and  Marriage        199 

Lonely  is  the  Big  Marsh  today;  the  few  passing 
Cranes  have  discarded  it  as  an  aero-station,  and 
the  call  of  their  old  enemy  is  fading  from  the 
subconsciousness  of  the  younger  generation  of 
frogs;  if  heard  close  at  hand  I  do  not  believe  one 
would  dive  to  cover.  All  this  occurred  more  than 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  and  Mr.  S.  Hill  Crane 
has  moved  to  town  with  the  family  with  which 
he  has  lived  so  long,  and  spends  his  last  days 
looking  down  on  chickens  and  in  the  Spring,  utter- 
ing soft  nothings  to  the  South  wind,  that  has,  also, 
seemingly  abandoned  her  wireless  station  on  the 
Big  Marsh. 

When  we  went  into  the  wilderness  to  live  in  a 
log  house;  that  house  was  only  a  mile  from  the 
village  of  Dartford,  but  between  our  house  and 
the  little  village  was  Mills'  Swamp,  and  through 
it  the  road  was  made  by  placing  little  logs  side  by 
side,  and  then  putting  brush  over  the  logs  and 
dirt  over  both.  The  track  was  not  more  than  a 
dozen  feet  wide  and  neither  side  was  fenced,  but 
old  Mills  was  going  to  fence  his  side  and  had  piles 
of  rails  along,  once  in  such  a  distance,  and  for 
years  neglected  to  build  a  fence.  Why  should 
he,  when  other  people  only  fenced  their  cultivated 
land?  There  was  not  another  house  between  our 
house  and  the  east  side  of  the  village,  and  Jerry 
Norton  had  no  difficulty  in  making  a  certain  seven- 
year-old  boy  believe  that  Mills'  Swamp  had  been 


200     What  Birds  Plave  Done  With  Me 

set  aside  for  Hell's  Kitchen,  as  soon  as  they  got 
it  drained.  I  suppose  the  point  he  was  making 
was  that  they  never  could  drain  it  and  they  never 
have  up  to  date. 

Those  stranger  days  when  Indians  were  seen 
daily  gliding  along  the  trail  that  we  called  a 
road,  and  coming  out  of  the  marsh  with  strings 
of  dead  pigeons;  its  visible  terrors  were  enough 
to  raise  goose-pimples  on  a  young  frontier  tender- 
foot, but  it  really  was  the  unseen,  lurking  hide- 
ousness  of  the  swamp  under  the  curtain  of  night, 
all  manner  of  unearthly  noises  in  the  sky  that 
settled  down  to  taste  the  bubbling  hell  broth  that 
was  being  cooked  by  a  million  flickering  lights, 
that  froze  a  fellow's  blood. 

Dr.  Barnes  coming  along  this  road  to  see  my 
brother  Ted,  who  was  sick,  had  left  his  tired  horse 
at  home  and  was  just  opposite  the  fifth  rail  pile 
when  from  the  next  rail  pile,  a  mighty  Mountain 
Lion  sprang  into  the  road  with  a  raucous  screech 
that  for  an  instant  silenced  every  other  noise  in 
the  wilderness,  except  the  beating  of  the  doctor's 
heart.  The  stars  were  out,  but  there  was  no 
moon  and  the  most  obvious  things  about  the  at- 
tacking beast  were  its  eyes  and  tail;  the  tail  in 
constant  motion  as  the  big  cat  lashed  its  sides 
and  the  green  eyes  emitting  sparks  of  fire.  The 
doctor  thought  at  first  that  there  were  about  fifty 
feet  between  them,  but  as  the  night  prowler  ad- 


Birds'  Courtship  and  Marriage        201 

vanced,  the  man  with  the  saddle-bags  on  his  arm, 
backed  away  in  the  direction  of  the  village,  having 
on  hand  a  progressive  case  whose  course  could 
not  be  checked  by  the  kind  of  pills  he  carried. 
The  agitated  gentleman  was  trying  to  over-awe  it 
by  the  gleam  of  his  brown  eyes  into  its  two  points 
of  flame,  and  perhaps  he  succeeded  to  some  slight 
extent,  but  the  close  proximity  of  the  village, 
swarming  with  dogs,  was  most  likely  the  reason 
why  a  good  hunter  went  to  bed  without  a  late 
supper.  The  doctor  made  his  professional  call 
later,  having  exchanged  his  saddle-bags  Ifor  a 
double-barrelled  shotgun  loaded  with  buckshot, 
and  brought  with  him,  as  further  body-guard,  Bill 
Marshall  and  Charley  Cody,  each  armed  with  a 
long  rifle,  muzzle-loaders. 

The  township  hunt  organized  and  carried  on 
with  vigor,  saw  many  traces  of  this  undesired 
visitor  from  regions  to  the  north,  but  the  beast 
eluded  all  pursuit.  But  this  is  another  story. 
They  sent  me  to  the  doctor's  boarding  place  that 
he  also  used  as  an  office,  for  some  medicine  for 
Ted,  now  nearly  well,  that  would  be  found  wait- 
ing my  coming.  As  hero  of  the  Mountain  Lion 
story,  the  doctor's  time  had  been  a  good  bit 
broken  in  on  and  he  had  forgotten  to  put  it  up. 
His  landlady  was  sure  he  would  be  right  back 
and  advised  me  to  wait.  I  waited  and  waited, 
and  waited,  and  it  was  dark  when  he  got  back. 


202     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

It  was  really  outrageous  to  have  allowed  a 
little  fellow  to  go  through  that  marsh  so  soon 
after  that  unsuccessful  Mountain  Lion  hunt,  but 
there  is  this  to  be  said,  that  the  big  scare  made 
many  others,  afterward  encountered,  seem  com- 
paratively trifling.  It  was  doubtless  a  Mountain 
Lion,  but  they  called  it  a  Panther,  and  it  took 
up  my  trail  the  moment  I  got  out  in  the  night 
alone.  I  thought  I  was  giving  him  a  good  run 
for  his  money,  as  the  saying  goes,  but  he  some 
way  outran  me  and  when  I  got  to  the  fifth  pile 
of  rails,  he  rushed  from  the  sixth  pile,  his  old 
lurking  place,  and  sprang  upon  me.  Undoubt- 
edly a  person  may  be  paralyzed  with  fear,  and  I 
must  have  been,  for  I  made  no  attempt  to  escape. 
The  impact  of  the  creature's  body  knocked  me 
over,  and  the  creature  began  licking  my  face, 
naturally  enough  as  it  was  our  big  dog  that  had 
come  to  meet  me.  That  I  did  not  choke  him  to 
death  through  pure  joy,  is  little  short  of  a  miracle, 
but  strangely  enough  I  was  more  afraid  of  the 
sure-enough  Panther  than  I  had  ever  been. 

This  digression  is  simply  to  establish  the  fact 
that  bird  courtship  may  be  of  so  fascinating  a 
character  as  to  actually  overcome  the  most  deadly 
fear. 

A  booming  noise,  unlike  anything  else  on  earth, 
starting  at  the  earth  and  seemingly  going  around 
in  a  circle,  up,  up  in  the  sky,  and  when  it  had 


Birds'  Courtship  and  Marriage        203 

vanished,  the  same  thing  coming  nearer  and  nearer 
and  dropping  in  the  grass  at  your  feet  in  the  late 
twilight,  or  early  dawn,  when  sight  and  fancy 
are  one  and  the  same  thing.  Before  I  was  ten 
years  of  age  I  had  followed  this  gripping  mystery 
all  over  that  swamp  with  a  Panther  hidden  behind 
every  tree,  and  a  convention  of  them  assembling 
in  every  thicket.  I  just  could  not  give  it  up  if  I 
died  for  it.  A  ditch  through  Mills'  Swamp  emp- 
tied into  the  Puckyan,  right  opposite  "the  deep 
hole,"  which  everyone  knew  was  the  very  best 
place  to  catch  chubs  for  pickerel  bait.  Freshets 
from  the  melting  of  deep  snows  in  the  spring, 
and  occasional  heavy  rains  in  summer  brought 
floods  of  muddy  water  into  the  sluggish  river  and 
along  the  south  side,  under  the  shadow  of  ven- 
erable elms ;  a  considerable  mud  bank  was  formed 
and  this  mud  bank  was,  from  time  to  time,  per- 
forated by  holes  as  big  as  a  lead  pencil,  a  kind 
of  a  Brobdingnagian  piece  of  honey-comb  with  no 
suggestion  of  honey.  It  was  a  crazy  trestle-board 
upon  which  the  outline  of  no  theory  could  be 
erected. 

It  was  likely  early  in  May  or  late  April,  on 
the  eve  of  a  fishing  Saturday  that  I  fished  the 
deep  hole  for  chubs  with  which  to  catch  the  king 
of  great  Northern  Pike  out  of  Green  Lake,  and 
if  not  actually  the  king,  I  at  least,  hoped  for  the 
heir-apparent.  I  think  it  rained  and  I  did  not 


204     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

go  fishing  the  next  day,  but  that  chub  fishing  I 
have  gone  back  to  oftener  in  memory  than  any 
other  fishing  I  ever  did,  and  still  rank  it  as  a 
great  event  in  my  life.  The  mystery  that  I  had 
pursued  so  long  and  so  far,  suddenly  staged  itself 
along  the  inner  edge  of  the  mud-flat,  under  the 
outer  shadow  of  great  trees  and  just  at  the  point 
where  twilight  and  night  blended  and  became 
one.  I  thought  them  snipe  and  had  seen  them 
across  the  river  pursuing  each  other  while  I  fought 
mosquitoes  and  caught  bait.  I  was  sole  audience, 
sole  press  reporter,  at  a  Woodcocks'  Gretna 
Green  without  knowing  how  privileged  a  charac- 
ter I  was.  It  was  as  novel  a  kind  of  "Seven  Up" 
as  any  that  could  have  been  played  out  for  Alice 
when  seeing  things  in  Fairyland.  Why  seven  up  ? 
For  the  very  excellent  reason  that  going  and  com- 
ing, there  were  just  that  number  at  one  time  in 
the  air.  What  an  astounding  mode  of  courtship 
— an  aerial  dance.  The  male  bird  doing  all  the 
dancing;  making  unearthly  booming  sounds  and 
spinning  around  in  the  air  as  he  climbs  invisible 
stairways  till  he  hears  the  angels  sing,  then  the 
return  trip,  falling  at  her  feet,  but  quite  done  up 
till  the  next  time. 

It's  not  only  mysterious,  it's  inexplicable,  but 
it  does  the  trick  and  is  presumably  the  surest  way 
to  ensnare  the  affection  of  Miss  Henrietta  Wood- 
cock. This  is  billing  and  cooing  with  a  long  dash 


Birds'  Courtship  and  Marriage        205 

between  each  bill  and  coo.  If  the  little  god  of 
love  who  presides  over  human  courtship  and  mar- 
riage, also,  follows  the  courtship  of  a  Woodcock 
that  may  explain  why  we  see  him  pictured  with  so 
few  clothes — stripped  for  a  race.  An  old  sailor 
here  in  Biloxi  when  asked  if  he  knew  what  caused 
the  tide,  admitted  that  he  did,  and  proceeded  to 
explain  it:  "You  know,"  said  he,  "when  a  feller 
turns  over  in  bed  he  gets  there  quite  a  bit  ahead 
of  the  covers  that  come  a-rolling  and  a-swashing 
along  after  him,  and  when  the  world  turns  over 
in  the  ocean,  the  waves  come  a-rolling  and  a-swash- 
ing along  some  ways  behind.  You  can  explain 
everything  if  you  are  careful  to  study  out  the 
reasons."  He  is  not  here  now  and  it  has  always 
been  a  matter  of  regret  that  I  never  asked  him  to 
elucidate  the  seeming  mystery  of  the  Woodcock's 
courtship. 

Male  birds  are  the  greatest  lovers  in  the  world, 
always  excepting  Wilson's  Phalarope.  Though 
he  belongs  to  Mr.  Wilson,  I  greatly  suspect  him 
of  being  secretly  opposed  to  the  League  of  Na- 
tions, for  he  is  publicly  opposed  to  the  holy  bonds 
of  matrimony,  and  is  on  the  wrong  side  of  most 
things — miserable  little  no-account  snipe.  He  is 
no  Lord  of  creation.  Good  Lord!  his  wife  has 
to  do  all  the  courting  and  threaten  him  with  a 
breach  of  promise  case  before  she  can  force  him 
to  marry  her  and  he  just  hates  her  because  she  is 


2o6     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

bigger  and  stronger  and  better  looking  than  he  is. 
Could  any  wife  respect  such  a  husband?  You 
know  she  could  not,  and  I,  for  one,  think  she 
serves  him  just  right  when  she  leaves  him  to  in- 
cubate the  eggs  and  rear  the  family,  without  help 
from  her.  Cutting  all  domestic  matters  she 
devotes  herself  to  civic  affairs  and  is  a  really 
respected  suffragette.  This  Miss  Nancy,  old  hen, 
Bridget,  Child's  Nurse,  he,  Phalarope,  is  the 
mean  little  exception  to  a  sex  that  has  made  woo- 
ing a  profession  and  song  and  love,  synonymous. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

A  LAST  YEAR'S  BIRD'S  NEST 

This  is  a  proverbial  type  of  emptiness,  but 
Nature  abhors  a  vacuum  and  emptiness  is  speed- 
ily filled  with  things  visible  or  invisible.  At  a 
first  glance,  this  dilapidated,  weather-worn  old 
nest  seems  as  bare  as  old  Mother  Hubbard's  cup- 
board, but  before  you  can  look  twice,  a  ray  from 
Aladdin's  Lamp  has  gilded  and  beautified  and 
crowds  its  emptiness  with  teeming  life. 

Lo !  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  work  of  art, 
not  made  with  hands,  and  of  a  model  to  be  seen 
"through  the  latticed  windows  of  the  grove," 
when  Time  was  young.  Yes,  bird-craft  is  greater 
than  hand-craft,  for  no  human  creature,  using  his 
hands  and  mouth  alone  could  equal  the  wonder 
of  this  old  nest.  This  Master-Builder  could  have 
never  been  taught  Geometry,  but  he,  nevertheless, 
never  fails  to  produce  a  perfect  circle  in  the  archi- 
tecture of  a  nest  whose  model  is  unchanging  from 
age  to  age  and  whose  craftsmen  produce  nothing 
that  falls  short  of  perfection. 

There  is  magic  here.  Aladdin's  Lamp  is  so 
207 


What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

flooding  the  old  nest  with  light,  unapproachable, 
that  one  instinctively  begins  to  fumble  for  his 
shoe-laces.  We  have  before  us  a  microcosm, 
in  this  shallow  cavity,  life  and  melody  had  their 
birth,  pray  God,  the  life  may  be  unending  and  the 
melody  as  eternal  as  Time.  An  empty  nest? — 
far  from  it.  Here  the  miracle  of  Mother-Love 
has  reflected  the  visible  presence  of  the  Divine 
Creator  of  something  so  holy  that  in  its  presence, 
Art  and  Song  fall  down  powerless  and  all  speech 
becomes  incoherent  mutterings. 

I  hold  the  crumbling  nest  in  my  hand  and  try 
to  visualize  a  form  or  forms  that  the  depths  of 
space  have  swallowed  up,  try  to  follow  the  waves 
of  melody  that  may  flow  on  for  twice  ten  thou- 
sand years  and  my  vanished  singers,  indeed,  be- 
come "Troubadours  and  Ballad  singers  on  the 
streets  of  Heaven."  Much  has  gone  from  the 
nest  and  much  remains.  A  nest  is  a  type  of  home 
and  the  perfect  home,  also,  has  its  relation  to 
Past  and  Future,  Life  and  Gladness,  and  there  is 
nothing  else  of  greater  significance,  or  more  uni- 
versal attractiveness  in  this  present  evil  world. 

How  well  I  remember  my  first  nest  which,  so 
to  speak,  I  held  in  co-partnership  with  the  parent 
birds — a  pair  of  Robins.  It  was  located  on  a 
corner  of  a  Virginia  rail  fence,  along  a  lane  where 
I  drove  cows  every  day  on  my  father's  farm  in 
Wisconsin.  I  had  never  seen  a  nest — it  was  my 


A  Last  Year's  Bird's  Nest  209 

first  year  in  the  country  and  I  am  not  even  sure 
that  I  had  ever  heard  of  one.  When  I  first  saw 
the  Robins  flying  about  with  grass  and  straw  in 
their  mouths,  I  pondered  upon  it  but  certainly 
did  not  arrive  at  the  right  explanation,  for,  on 
recovering  from  having  been  thrown  from  the 
back  of  an  unbroken  colt,  I  resumed  my  usual  duty 
as  a  cow-herd,  I  suddenly  saw  the  nest, — not  as 
high  as  my  head  and  containing  four  wonderfully 
blue  eggs — Robin's  egg  blue — there  is  no  other 
color  just  like  it.  I  afterward  saw  some  of  the 
wonders  of  architecture  that  man  has  erected  on 
this  earth,  I  saw  diamonds  and  other  precious 
stones,  confronted  many  of  the  wonders  of  Crea- 
tion, but  nothing  ever  astounded,  awed,  enthralled 
me  like  that  first  nest  with  its  sky-blue  eggs.  It 
has  been  said  that  every  circus  is  but  a  duplica- 
tion of  our  first  circus  and  so  every  other  nest 
among  the  thousands  I  have  seen  has  but  in  a 
greater  or  less  degree,  reflected  the  wonder  of 
that  first  nest — a  house  not  made  with  hands. 
Wood-peckers  building  their  nests  in  the  very 
heart  of  oaks,  turning  bill  and  head  into  chisel 
and  hammer  and  beating  carpenters  at  their  own 
kind  of  work,  impressed  me  greatly,  but  some 
way  it  did  not  seem  quite  so  wonderful  as  the 
perfectly  round  nest  made  of  grass  and  mud, 
with  its  blue  eggs  under  the  blue  sky.  I  did  not 
believe  the  man  who  first  told  me  of  the  Bal- 


2io     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

timore  Oriole's  nest;  a  woven  bottle,  hitched  to 
the  tip-top  branch  of  a  tall  tree,  where  it  was 
swung  by  the  winds  as  no  boat  was  ever  rocked 
by  the  waves.  But  it  was  all  true,  plus  the 
witchery  of  always  finding  it  complete  and  never 
in  process  of  construction.  I  think  I  was  most 
shocked  and  sorry  for  a  little  warbler,  who,  so 
to  speak,  always  has  to  carry  its  nest  with  it 
and  that  nest  a  Dutch  oven.  No  wonder  he 
walks  in  the  most  dignified  manner,  instead  of 
hopping, — what  else  can  you  expect  of  an  "Oven- 
Bird"?  The  name  was  given  on  account  of  the 
size  and  shape  of  the  nest  that  is  built  on  the 
ground. 

From  the  Fish-hawk's  nest,  built  year  after 
year,  in  the  same  tree,  one  nest  upon  another,  till 
you  see  what  looks  like  a  cartload  of  sticks,  down 
to  no  nest  at  all ;  the  eggs  deposited  on  the  ground 
or  a  flat  rock,  there  are  all  gradations.  So  there 
are  all  sizes  of  eggs;  from  the  Ostrich,  as  big  as 
your  head,  down  to  that  of  the  Humming-bird 
not  bigger  than  a  pea.  When  Jerry  Norton,  the 
village  liar,  told  me  of  birds'  eggs  bigger  than 
my  head,  I  thought  he  was  lying;  when  he  told 
me  that  some  bald-headed  men  had  a  sun-stroke 
on  a  desert  and  as  they  lay  unconscious,  some 
Ostriches  came  along  and  thinking  the  bald  heads 
their  own  eggs,  sat  on  them  and  hatched  out  bal- 
let-girls, I  knew  he  was.  He  must  have  told  the 


A  Last  Year's  Bird's  Nest  211 

same  story  to  Francis  Wilson  and  it  looks  as 
though  he  believed  it,  for  he  has  been  telling  it  off 
and  on  ever  since. 

That  birds  have  unchanging  types  of  nests, 
built  in  about  the  same  general  locations  from 
year  to  year,  has  long  been  established  beyond 
question.  In  fact,  so  generally  accepted  is  the 
type  and  the  location  that  at  a  first  glance  we 
might  jump  to  the  mistaken  conclusion  that  both 
are  beyond  change.  There  are  few  rules  having 
an  invariable  sequence  and  the  general  rule  of 
the  nesting  habits  of  birds  is  not  an  exception. 
Their  rule  is  changed,  some  in  only  a  slight  degree, 
others  radically.  The  Swallows  have  departed 
most  widely  in  this  respect.  The  Barn-Swallows, 
with  their  long  row  of  nests  beneath  the  eaves, 
have  made  certainly  great  departure  from  the 
habits  of  their  ancestors,  but  not  greater  than 
the  Purple-Martin,  from  a  hole  in  a  tree  to  his 
present  man-made  apartment  house. 

Perhaps  strangest  of  all  is  the  Swift  in  the 
chimney, — the  Chimney  Swift,  braving  smoke  and 
fire  and  gloom  profound,  not  to  mention  an  odor 
of  creosote  next  to  a  Hun's  gas  shell.  Great 
numbers  of  young  must  be  smothered  and  burned, 
but  still  they  persist,  doubtless  for  reasons  as 
mysterious  as  their  place  of  winter  sojourn,  which 
is  not  known.  The  Night-Hawk,  also,  made  a 
stupendous  change  when  it  changed  from  the 


212     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

bosom  of  Mother  Nature  to  the  flat  roof  of  a 
city  block,  where  it  is  not  infrequently  found 
nesting. 

The  Mourning  Dove  is  one  of  the  most  in- 
artistic and  slovenly  of  nest  builders,  often  mak- 
ing so  shallow  and  poorly-constructed  a  nest  that 
a  sudden  movement  from  fright  will  cause  her  to 
knock  out  of  the  nest  one  or  both  of  her  eggs. 
What  is  true  of  the  Mourning  Dove  was  equally 
true  of  the  Passenger  Pigeon  and  I  recall  the 
same  kind  of  accident  to  a  Pigeon  nest  that  I  was 
watching,  many  years  ago;  first,  one  egg  and,  a 
few  days  afterward,  the  second  were  knocked  out 
and  broken  by  the  mother  bird.  That  various 
birds  have  ideas  of  adornment  and  ornamentation 
is  beyond  question.  I  saw  a  Robin's  nest,  this  last 
season  built  in  a  passage-way  beside  lattice  work 
and  on  the  side  opposite  of  the  lattice  work, 
streamers  of  heavy  cord  had  been  attached  to 
the  nest  and  hung  down  three  and  four  feet.  How 
else  are  we  to  explain  the  shifted  snake-skin  that 
the  Great  Fly-Catcher  twists  around  its  nest? 
Bright  pieces  of  yarn  and  ribbon  will  take  the  eye 
of  many  a  bird  as  "the  weave  of  a  kiltie  will 
take  the  eye  of  a  lassie,"  according  to  Harry 
Lauder,  and  whatever  else  the  tartan  is,  it  must 
be  bright  to  be  most  pleasing. 

I  recall  a  Wren's  nest  built  in  a  gaudily-painted 
watering  pot,  the  wrecked  plaything  of  a  child, 


A  Last  Year's  Bird's  Nest  213 

both  the  handle  and  the  spout  were  missing,  but  it 
was  clearly  the  thing  the  Wren  long  had  sought 
and  it  was  a  possession  she  was  ready  to  defend 
with  her  life  if  need  be. 

If  we  took  up  the  list  of  odd  places  in  which 
we  have  known  birds  to  build  nests,  like  Tenny- 
son's Brook,  the  number  would  go  on  forever. 
Two  we  must  mention.  A  Robin,  possibly  from 
Boston,  built  its  nest  itj  a  hub ;  one,  from  Maine,  in 
a  boot-leg. 

In  China,  there  is  an  edible  bird's  nest,  that  is, 
edible  to  the  Chinese,  and  they  are  welcome  to 
my  share;  and  in  the  far  North  many  people  get 
both  food  and  drink,  figuratively  speaking,  out  of 
the  Eider-ducks'  nest,  all  the  expensive  Eider- 
down of  commerce  being  from  the  nests  of  the 
birds  who  divest  their  own  bodies  to  protect  their 
ducklings.  Surely  nothing  else  in  this  world  is 
born  into  quite  so  downy  a  nest.  The  value  of 
the  down  has  alone  kept  the  duck  from  the  exter- 
mination that  overtook  the  Labrador  Duck. 

The  story  of  birds'  nests  is  a  rich  lode  of  nat- 
ural history  which  if  properly  smelted,  is  easily 
beaten  into  leaves  as  numerous  as  the  leaves  of 
autumn.  In  other  words,  the  man  has  not  yet 
been  born  with  the  Seer's  insight  and  the  Magi- 
cian's touch  to  weave  again  the  rare  tapestry  that 
Mother  Nature's  birds  have  been  weaving  since 
the  world  was  fresh  and  young.  The  miracle  of 


214     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

it  all,  the  nest  and  the  egg,  the  egg  and  the  bird, 
the  'bird  and  the  flight,  the  flight  and  the  song,  in 
advance  of  the  fact,  if  told  for  truth,  it  would 
have  taxed  the  credulity  of  children  and  fools. 
A  mass  of  protoplasm  inside  a  shell,  the  shell 
for  a  few  weeks  kept  warm  by  the  heat  of  the 
mother's  body,  then  something  alive  from  within 
calling  for  the  freedom  that  life  demands,  no  an- 
swer from  without,  no  offer  of  help,  then  the 
cramped,  puny  creature  nerved  to  stupendous  ef- 
fort by  the  very  urge  of  existence,  batters  down  its 
dungeon  walls  and  for  days  may  remain  blind  and 
helpless,  or  in  twenty-four  hours  may  be  a  full 
partaker  of  the  life  of  its  kind,  running  or  swim- 
ming with  the  speed  of  adults.  That  the  Ostrich 
chick  should  perform  this  prodigy  is  difficult  of 
belief:  that  the  unhatched  Humming-bird  should 
do  likewise  is  unthinkable;  imagination  lays  down 
and  will  not  come  to  our  help.  In  this  way,  and 
in  this  way  only,  is  bird  life  continued  on  this 
planet,  where  nest  robbing  is  a  business,  a  pastime 
and  a  science. 

In  almost  every  country  on  the  face  of  the 
earth,  frequently  open  and  above  board  and  again 
secret  and  furtively,  birds'  eggs  are  articles  of 
merchandise,  the  trade  under  the  usual  laws  of 
trade,  scarcity  inflating  prices.  The  rarer  the 
species,  the  higher  the  price  the  eggs  of  some 
extinct  species  selling  for  hundreds  of  dollars  each 


A  Last  Year's  Bird's  Nest  215 

to  collectors.  The  eggs  of  our  game  birds  since 
the  settlement  of  the  country,  have,  to  some  ex- 
tent, been  used  for  food,  following  the  customs 
of  savage  predecessors.  Here  is  a  modern  in- 
stance of  how  eggs  are  eaten  in  the  far  North, 
by  the  natives.  When  not  quite  of  age  Benjamin 
Rogers,  son  of  Dr.  B.  T.  Rogers,  President  of 
Racine  College,  Racine,  Wisconsin,  went  to 
Alaska  to  install  an  electric  lighting  plant  for  the 
Episcopal  Mission  at  Point  Hope.  With  five 
natives  he  paddled  sixty  miles  to  an  island  to  col- 
lect Murre's  eggs — the  Murre  incubates  a  single 
egg — and  they  filled  their  skin  boat  with  such  an 
enormous  load  that  it  took  thirty-six  hours*  con- 
stant paddling  to  make  the  return  trip.  This  inci- 
dent is  only  three  years  old  and  my  intrepid  young 
friend  modestly  confided  the  adventure  to  me  on 
his  return.  The  vast  number  of  eggs  collected  as  a 
pastime,  could  they  be  brought  to  light,  would 
surprise  the  average  Ornithologist,  and  astound 
the  public.  As  a  special  Game  Warden  and  Con- 
servation Warden,  I  have  examined  collections 
so  extensive  that  no  one  would  expect  to  find  their 
equal  outside  of  a  museum.  I  recall  one  in  par- 
ticular, the  work  of  a  retired  farmer,  living  in  a 
town  of  eighteen  hundred  population,  carried  on 
for  years,  the  collection  hidden  in  his  barn  and 
kept  secret  from  all  his  neighbors.  Though  a 
close-fisted  old  fellow,  he  has  bought  most  of  his 


216     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

eggs,  many  secretly  from  children,  and  had 
spent  money  to  indulge  this  passion  as  he  would 
not  spend  money  for  anything  else.  A  devout 
church  member,  when  I  asked  to  see  his  collection 
he  looked  me  in  the  face  and  most  emphatically 
denied  having  one.  The  light  of  a  star  helped 
his  memory  and  he  took  me  to  his  barn,  with 
profuse  apologies.  The  necessity  of  catching  a 
train  prevented  me  from  going  through  it  all, 
but  I  had  rarely  seen  the  like  in  any  private  col- 
lection and  this  the  strangest  thing  of  all :  he  was 
afraid  to  own  it,  would  neither  sell  nor  give  it 
away  and  had  no  one  to  leave  it  to.  I  imagine 
that  I  will  not  be  believed  when  I  assert  that 
fortunes,  both  in  this  and  other  countries,  are  be- 
ing spent  for  birds'  eggs  and  these  collections  will 
be  inherited  by  people  who  in  our  better  civiliza- 
tion, already  knocking  at  the  door,  will  be 
ashamed  to  have  it  known  that  among  their  an- 
cestors were  nest  robbers  and  they  will  secretly 
destroy  a  gruesome  and  worthless  inheritance. 

''The  Oologist"  is  the  name  of  a  little  magazine 
having  Science  pilloried  on  its  title  page,  the  little 
mother  of  yellow  journalism,  for  it  is  published 
in  the  interest  of  the  birds'  egg  collector,  the 
scientific  birds'  egg  collector,  if  you  please.  Be- 
hold the  noble  ambition  of  "The  Oologist"  to 
promote  the  distribution  of  birds'  eggs  so  that 
every  museum  and  school  shall  have  a  collection, 


A  Last  Year's  Bird's  Nest  217 

the  larger  the  better,  that  the  sum  of  human 
knowledge  may  thus  be  increased.  Granted  that 
the  object  is  primarily  scientific,  I  challenge  the 
right  of  the  egg  collector  to  make  persistent  in- 
roads upon  our  vanishing  wild  life,  for  we  are 
not  to  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  the  egg  of  the 
rare  bird  is  sought  above  all  others.  For  a  fact, 
collections  of  eggs  and  stuffed  birds  are  of  small 
value  to  the  student  of  Ornithology  and  worthless 
to  everyone  else.  The  wise  teacher  of  such 
studies  says  with  the  poet  Bryant:  "Go  forth  under 
the  open  sky  and  list  to  Nature's  teaching,"  and 
the  soul  of  the  teacher  who  would  send  a  student 
to  a  city  to  study  a  musty,  moth-eaten  collection 
of  either  birds  or  eggs,  must  be  already  dead 
within  him. 

To  me,  an  empty  nest,  a  last  year's  bird's  nest, 
if  you  please,  is  still  wonderful — as  wonderful  as 
the  life  for  which  it  stands.  I  have  seen  some 
of  the  great  collections  of  eggs  in  this  country 
with  only  weariness  and  disgust  and  I  have  found 
a  half  shell  on  my  lawn  and  found  in  it  a  message 
so  wonderful  that  when  I  append  it  here  and  at- 
tempt once  more  to  tell  its  story,  I  have  the  same 
feeling  that  I  had  then,  that  the  story  of  the 
half  shell  is  not  half  told. 

To  call  one  half  of  a  blue  shell  an  "Azurite" 
would  be  a  stilted  and  fanciful  way  of  speaking 
of  a  fragment  of  a  Robin's  egg  found  in  the  green 


218     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

grass  on  the  lawn,  where  the  never-ending  miracle 
of  incubation  had  taken  place  in  the  tree  above. 
Nevertheless,  the  one  who  found  it  felt  that  all 
words  were  inadequate  to  express  something  of 
wonder  and  awe  in  his  inner  consciousness  aroused 
by  the  not  at  all  uncommon  find. 

Beautiful  and  fragile  as  the  fragment  was,  it 
had  played  its  part  and  was  now  a  worthless  thing 
to  be  cast  aside,  but  the  blue  still  suggested  the 
sky  and  the  creature  that  had  come  out  of  it,  as 
belonging  to  another  world — out  of  the  blue,  into 
the  blue,  a  relationship  between  the  near  and 
remote. 

Surely  there  is  no  other  day,  but  a  June  day, 
that  comes  in  emerald  robes  and  golden  sandals 
across  the  far  horizon  with  kisses,  and  more  kisses, 
for  all  that  are  glad  and  rejoice  in  the  great  gift 
of  life.  On  such  a  morning  a  world-weary  man 
came  hurrying  across  the  lawn  where  his  "Super 
Six"  awaited  him  on  the  drive.  As  he  drew  near, 
instinctively,  the  owner  of  the  fragment  of  blue 
shell  closed  his  hand,  as  though  it  would  not  be 
kind  to  show  a  glimpse  of  Heaven  to  a  poor 
wretch  who  was  carrying  about  with  him  his  own 
Hell. 

The  unhappy  man's  story  is  scarcely  more  un- 
common than  the  fragment  of  shell.  Here  it  is 
in  brief.  From  his  childhood,  the  poor  worldling 
had  been  shut  out  from  joy  and  gladness  of  the 


A  Last  Year's  Bird's  Nest  219 

wonder  world  about  us.  From  a  tenement,  where 
foreigners  were  herded  like  cattle,  he  had  climbed 
to  the  ownership  of  a  big  factory,  an  ill-smelling 
factory,  from  which  dollars  came  in  a  stream  and 
this  stream  had  been  augmented  by  war  profits 
till  it  was  a  torrent  submerging  all  the  landmarks 
and  carrying  him  out  on  a  lonesome  ocean,  where 
there  were  nothing  but  dollars  and  where  dollars 
would  no  longer  buy  a  thing — all  quite  valueless. 
He  was  in  the  last  stages  of  a  new  disease,  that 
doctors  could  do  worse  than  call  Millionitis. 

When  the  wretched,  sleepless,  wandering 
Croesus  had  eliminated  himself  from  the  land- 
scape, the  owner  of  the  half  shell  shyly  opened 
his  hand  and  the  first  glance  convinced  him  that 
the  fairies  had  been  doing  things,  while  he  had 
been  only  talking,  for  the  blue  had  collected  all 
the  other  rich  coloring  of  a  world  of  beauty.  His 
eyes  were  suddenly  ravished  with  the  light  of 
dawns,  sunsets,  waterfalls,  rainbows,  and  look- 
ing to  see  that  he  was  not  observed,  he  held  the 
fragment  of  shell  to  his  ear,  and  as  the  sea  shell 
sings  of  the  ocean,  his  being  was  suddenly  flooded 
with  the  bird  song  of  the  universe,  a  feathered 
"choir  invisible." 

Time,  like  everything  else  in  these  days,  is  to 
be  Hooverized  and  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
man  with  the  half  shell  had  only  stopped  his  lawn 
mower  long  enough  to  dip  up  a  little  of  the  dewy 


220     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

freshness  of  the  June  morning  in  the  tiny  blue  cup 
in  his  hand.  He  knew  very  well  that  it  would  be 
quite  impossible  to  get  enough  for  a  bath,  but 
it  would  take  no  time  to  get  enough  to  refresh  the 
lips  of  the  inner  man  of  the  heart. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

A  SAINT  BARTHOLOMEW  OF  BIRDS 

A  massacre  is  indiscriminate  slaughter  with 
unnecessary  cruelty,  but  as  it  is  practically  never 
necessary,  it  is  always  cruel  and  outrageous. 
Hands  red  with  innocent  blood  make  indelible 
stains,  and  that  people  or  nation  indulging  in 
blood  lust  is  still  in  the  swaddling  clothes  of  a 
development  just  commencing.  Massacre  is  a 
parent  stem  upon  which  mob  violence  is  born  in 
the  shape  of  a  gnarled  and  unripe  fruit.  Mob 
violence  is  an  emotion  often  widely  divorced  from 
all  sober,  serious  thought,  in  fact,  it  is  incapable 
of  thought,  as  thought  would  destroy  the  unrea- 
soning act.  The  world  is  just  learning  the  pos- 
sibilities of  unleashed  passion  with  ignorance  as  a 
dynamo  running  wild. 

In  Longfellow's  "Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn"  is 
a  poem  entitled,  "The  Birds  of  Killingworth," 
and  in  that  poem  occur  the  words  that  serve  as 
the  caption  of  this  chapter.  The  whole  thing  de- 
scribed with  prophetic  vision  a  Saint  Bartholomew 
of  Birds,  restricted  to  a  circumscribed  area,  which 

221 


222     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

later  on  became  general,  universal.  Longfellow 
is  really  the  pioneer  writer  on  the  economic  value 
of  bird  life,  their  value  in  protecting  growing 
things  was  seemingly  as  well  known  to  the  poet- 
naturalist  as  to  any  scientist  who  has  followed 
him,  examining  stomachs  and  counting  noxious  in- 
sects found  therein.  In  his  vision  he  saw  a  mighty 
army  of  victorious  worms,  slimy,  hideous,  crawl- 
ing everywhere,  with  nothing  left  to  check  their 
onward  march,  now  that  the  birds  had  all  been 
killed. 

The  birds  were  massacred  by  the  very  farmers 
whom  they  protected,  for  the  reason  that  they 
were  robbers  of  the  harvest.  It's  the  same  class 
of  men  today  who  are  doing  nothing  to  save  what 
is  left  of  our  bird  neighbors,  an  allied  army  of 
bird  soldiers  fighting  the  onrush  of  wave  after 
wave  of  insect  life  that  will,  if  not  checked,  sweep 
the  earth.  When  the  men  who  had  massacred 
the  birds  saw  the  ruinous  nature  of  the  thing  they 
had  done,  they  sent  to  other  provinces  and 
brought  back  those  forms  of  life  of  which  their 
fields  and  forests  had  been  bereft  and  restored 
what  was  lost.  A  thing  impossible  when  the 
countries  of  the  earth  have  all  exterminated  their 
birds.  The  present  bird  massacre  means  bird 
extermination,  final,  eternal. 

While  it  may  be  true  that  we  only  know  of  the 
absolute  extermination  of  a  dozen  to  twenty 


A  Saint  Bartholomew  of  Birds         223 

species,  a  vast  number  of  species  are  close  to 
extermination.  I,  myself,  have  seen  the  awful 
decimation  in  the  lost  half  century.  I  recall 
photographs  of  the  aquatic  life  of  the  Saint  John's 
River,  Florida,  taken  forty  years  ago.  I  con- 
fess it  seemed  to  be  fairly  crowded  with  a  prodi- 
gal wealth  of  bird  life,  the  like  of  which  I  had 
never  even  dreamed  of,  or  waking,  thought  pos- 
sible. When  I  saw  the  river  for  the  first  time,  a 
little  over  a  dozen  years  ago,  the  almost  com- 
plete absence  of  all  life  was  more  appalling  than 
the  teeming  life  that  I  still  had  in  my  mind's  eye. 
Thousands  were  no  longer  represented  by  tens. 
From  Jacksonville  to  Sanford,  some  two  hundred 
miles,  with  the  exception  of  blackbirds,  I  did  not 
see  altogether,  fifty  birds  in  the  aggregate.  With 
a  good  pair  of  glasses  I  watched  from  the  upper 
deck,  the  dawn  come  over  the  lonely  floods  of 
water  and  for  a  long  time  nothing  moved  upon 
the  face  of  the  waters,  and  then  far  away  some 
fugitive  remnants  of  the  life  that  had  been  and 
was  gone.  Yes!  Longfellow  was  a  prophet,  had 
seen  a  vision  and  told  the  story,  not  only  of  the 
Saint  John's  River,  but  of  the  whole  world  in  two 
lines.  Did  I  recall  them  or  were  they  actually 
spoken  into  my  ear,  so  vivid  and  astonishing  they 
seemed : 

"The  wild  wind  went  moaning  everywhere, 
Lamenting  the  dead  children  of  the  air." 


Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

I,  myself,  witnessed  the  exodus  of  the  Passen- 
ger Pigeon ;  saw  the  flocks  grow  less  and  less,  and 
finally  vanish.  The  repulsive  story  of  that  great 
massacre  is  too  well  known  to  need  repetition, 
and  it  is  only  worth  while  from  its  possible  power 
to  point  a  moral  and  adorn  a  tale.  People  said 
then,  are  saying  now,  you  can't  kill  a  species,  they 
were  not  killed,  they  died  of  disease.  The  grace- 
ful Pigeon  and  the  lordly  Bison,  strangely  enough, 
were  both  afflicted  with  the  same  disease — human- 
itis,  caused  by  the  sting  of  a  tiny  microbe,  the 
very  deadliest  on  the  earth.  Within  the  historic 
period  no  race  of  creatures  has  become  extinct 
without  the  aid  of  man,  microbe,  or  "Lord  High 
Executioner,"  call  him  what  you  will. 

Massacre  is  defined  as  indiscriminate  slaughter, 
but  not  so  of  necessity  as  it  may  be  very  discrimi- 
nating, so  things  killed  in  great  numbers  by  star- 
vation or  the  sly,  prowling  decimation  of  secret 
enemies,  are  scarcely  slaughtered  with  violence. 
I  wish  to  define  my  poetic  sentence,  at  the  head 
of  this  chapter  as  extensive,  unnecessary  killing 
with  or  without  discrimination  or  violence.  The 
destruction  of  a  bird's  natural  environment  with 
nothing  to  take  its  place,  may  look  toward  the 
final  destruction  of  that  species  as  certainly  as 
work  done  with  gun  or  club.  The  wholesale  de- 
struction of  great  forests  and  the  draining  and 
cultivation  of  great  areas  of  low  land  has  meant 


A  Saint  Bartholomew  of  Birds         225 

death  to  certain  species.  Civilization  does  not 
mean  bird  extermination  and  certain  harmless 
beneficial  birds  would  flourish  where  the  soil  is 
largely  cultivated,  were  they  not  harmed  by  en- 
emies having  nothing  to  do  with  a  changed  en- 
vironment. Were  districts  reforested  and  tangles 
left  along  hedge-rows  for  hiding  and  nesting 
places,  there  need  be  slight  loss  of  bird  life.  To 
this,  if  food  was  added  in  inclement  weather  in 
winter,  these  wild  neighbors  would  become  more 
than  half  domesticated  in  many  instances. 

Among  causes  resulting  in  extensive  destruction 
of  bird  life,  I  would  put  first  of  all,  the  all  but 
universal  armament  of  young  boys  with  air-guns. 
Military  training  of  boys  makes  the  efficient 
army;  the  air-guns  develop  and  make  efficient, 
the  adult  hunter,  killer,  slaughterer.  Three-year- 
olds  go  to  camp  in  the  space  under  the  sitting- 
room  table  and  there  is  enough  witchery  in  the 
air-gun  to  connect  their  present  camp  with  one  in 
the  wilderness,  where  this  plaything  shall  be  trans- 
formed into  a  real  gun,  and  they,  into  mighty 
hunters.  If  you  would  question  the  "true  sports- 
man," asking  him  when  he  became  interested  in 
hunting  and  if  he  answered  truthfully,  ninety-five 
per  cent,  would  say,  "Why,  always,  ever  since  I 
had  my  first  air-gun." 

Children  utterly  ignorant  of  the  commonest 


226     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

birds  are  sent  out  with  the  injunction  to  kill  only 
English  sparrows,  if  they  belong  to  families  in 
that  small  minority  who  happen  to  know  some- 
thing of  the  value  of  bird  life,  otherwise  without 
any  limitation  as  to  what  they  shall  kill,  but  the 
inability  of  the  juvenile  hunter  to  tell  birds  apart 
results  in  both  cases,  in  the  slaughter  of  all  vari- 
eties of  sparrows  and  other  small  brown  birds. 
A  couple  of  fairly-grown  boys  here  in  Biloxi  shot 
seventy-one  Cedar-Waxwings,  calling  them,  and 
I  think,  honestly  believing  them,  to  be  ua  kind  of 
English  Sparrow."  Thus  many  a  bird  has  suf- 
fered death  by  proxy  and  the  killing  of  one  variety 
leads  to  the  indiscriminate  killing  of  all.  Boys, 
air-guns,  Sparrows, — all  taken  together,  may 
seem  of  small  significance  and  be  only  remotely 
related  to  bird  annihilation,  but  are  certainly  ante- 
cedent causes.  Why  mob  law  for  English  Spar- 
rows ? 

In  the  treatment  of  this  small  stranger  within 
our  gates  we  have  made  an  exception,  if  there 
was  ever  any  reason  for  charging  us  with  being 
Anglo-maniacs;  the  rule  has  been  open  hatred 
and  in  the  neutrality  of  those  professing  it  was 
the  usual  element  of  prejudice. 

Even  State  Audubon  Societies  have  been  made 
to  seemingly  endorse  the  "sparrow-trap"  man 
and  publications,  carried  on  in  the  interest  of 
bird  protection,  have  advertised  a  scheme  to  help 


A  Saint  Bartholomew  of  Birds         227 

destroy  a  whole  family  of  friendly  little  birds, 
and  the  members  of  civic  organizations  have  often 
turned  themselves  into  cunning  Borgias  with  the 
same  end  in  view. 

These  visitors  from  over  the  sea  have  insisted 
on  living  in  close  proximity  to  their  worst  enemy, 
man,  who  has  betrayed  their  trust  and  mobbed, 
killed,  and  persecuted  them  in  every  conceivable 
way,  and  done  it  in  the  name  of  bird  protection. 
The  cry  has  been:  "They  drive  away  our  wild 
birds,  rob  their  nests  and  even  kill  them."  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  there  isn't  a  word  of  truth  in  the 
charge ;  man,  the  killer,  has  the  monopoly  in  that 
kind  of  sorry  persecution  and  destruction.  After 
years  of  this  treatment  we  are  just  beginning  to 
find  out  that  the  English  Sparrow  is  a  real  help 
in  the  struggle  for  existence  and  a  beneficial  bird 
in  our  war  with  noxious  insects.  The  Federal 
Department  of  Agriculture  is  certainly  in  error 
when  it  proposes  to  incite  Boy  Scouts  and  school 
children  in  carrying  out  mob  law  against  a  bird 
really  deserving  protection.  That  the  public 
press,  somewhat  generally,  is  protesting  against 
this  proposed  "St.  Bartholomew  Massacre"  of 
English  Sparrows  is  most  timely  and  may  prevent 
a  modern  enactment  of  Longfellow's  "Birds  of 
Killingworth,"  which,  if  pulled  off  would  be  apt 
to  cause  "the  spirits  of  the  wise  to  sit  in  the  clouds 
and  mock  us."  It  now  looks  as  though  the  Eng- 


228     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

lish  Sparrow  might  soon  be  allowed  to  take  out 
his  first  papers. 

No  one  thing  would  result  in  so  great  a  saving 
of  bird  life  as  the  passage  of  a  law  making  the 
air-gun,  like  "a  bird-cannon,"  a  thing  contraband, 
as  detrimental,  enormously  destructive  to  forms 
of  life,  essential  to  the  very  continuance  of  vege- 
tation on  the  planet.  The  Federal  Agricultural 
Department,  having  the  enforcement  of  the 
Migratory  Bird  Law  should  stop  the  manufactory 
and  sale  of  the  harmless  little  air-gun,  that  like 
a  dumb  watch  a  little  later  on  is  sure  to  be  changed 
to  a  live  one.  With  no  air-gun  in  the  hands  of 
the  callow  youngster,  and  no  license  to  hunt  till  a 
boy  has  attained  legal  manhood,  a  mob 
is  transformed  into  a  drilled  army.  Can  any- 
thing be  more  unwise  than  to  make  sportsmen 
out  of  the  rising  generation,  and  then  hire  War- 
dens to  stay  the  killing  of  useful  birds?  Certain 
evils  are  best  controlled  as  near  as  possible  to  the 
fountain  head. 

The  church  and  the  school  and  the  home  must 
be  made  active  in  the  cultivation  of  a  superhuman 
soul  against  killing.  Why  prattle  about  the  cul- 
tivation of  human  education?  Education  is  always 
on  the  side  of  the  killer;  it's  a  wilderness  where 
flesh-pots  are  the  things  most  to  be  desired. 
"Thou  shalt  not  kill"  must  some  way  be  put  into 
the  super-soul  of  mankind,  a  new  religion  in  which 


A  Saint  Bartholomew  of  Birds         229 

the  non-shedding  of  blood  shall  be  the  central 
tenant.  When  such  a  super-consciousness  be- 
comes universal  a  stain  shall  be  removed  from 
church,  and  the  school  and  from  all  homes. 

Back  of  the  Plume  Pirates,  shall  we  say  higher 
up,  are  the  women  of  our  best  society  and  back 
of  them  hideous,  merciless  Dame  Fashion.  Is 
there  no  flash  of  sympathy  common  to  all  moth- 
ers? Is  it  really  possible  that  a  human  mother 
knowing  that  her  borrowed  plumes  are  secured 
at  the  cost  of  death  to  other  mothers,  dumb  moth- 
ers, and  the  slow  starvation  of  nestlings,  can  still 
want  to  wear  trophies  of  a  savagery  that  would 
shock  savages? 

Men  are  not  a  whit  behind  the  mothers  of  men 
in  showing  themselves  merciless,  though  in  their 
own  cases  they  themselves  are  the  killers,  and 
back  of  the  killing  of  big  game  you  have  but  to 
scrutinize  the  so-called  prowess  to  discover  in  it 
a  vanity  akin  to  that  of  the  plume  wearer.  The 
great  Arctic  explorer,  Stefansson,  puts  this  thing 
in  its  true  light:  "With  me,  the  matter  of  big 
game  hunting  is  another  case  of  swords  sticking 
to  hands  that  seek  the  plough.  I  am  afraid  that 
I  am  not  a  true  sportsman.  It  is  impossible  for 
me  to  get  enjoyment  out  of  killing  and  if  I  did, 
I  should  get*  a  job  in  the  Chicago  stock-yards 
rather  than  follow  poor  frightened  wild  things 
around  with  a  rifle." 


232     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

them  and  they  protest  against  the  general  massa- 
cre of  the  past. 

Close  upon  the  heels  of  worry  among  sportsmen 
over  the  disappearance  of  the  wild  pigeon  and  the 
early  extinction  of  the  prairie  chicken,  comes  pre- 
diction of  the  end  of  the  mallard  duck.  An  East- 
ern writer  observes : 

"Formerly  mallards  existed  in  abundance,  hard 
to  realize  at  the  present  time.  Until  after  the  war 
(1861-1865)  the  ponds  of  middle  South  Carolina 
supported  millions  of  them  each  winter.  The 
noise  of  their  flight  sometimes  deafened  one. 
They  were  killed  by  the  wagonload.  At  Big  Lake, 
Arkansas,  in  the  winter  of  1893-1894,  a  single 
pot  hunter  sold  8000  mallards,  and  120,000  were 
sent  to  market.  In  Calcasieu  parish,  Louisiana, 
last  winter  250,000  mallards  were  killed.  Hun- 
dreds of  tons  were  killed  at  Lake  Malheur,  Ore- 
gon, for  their  feathers.  In  Canada  and  along  the 
many  lakes  up  to  Hudson  Bay,  duck  eggs  were 
sold  by  the  million,  their  contents  to  be  used  in 
glue  factories  and  for  the  refining  of  sugar." 

The  Superior  Telegram,  deploring  the  ruthless 
treatment  of  the  mallard,  contrasts  him  with  the 
wild  pigeon  to  the  latter's  disadvantage.  The 
bird,  it  says,  was  a  good  riddance,  though  tooth- 
some when  young  and  fat.  The  farming  industry 
could  not  afford  to  maintain  him,  because  he  was 
a  vegetarian,  and  never  harmed  an  insect.  The 


A  Saint  Bartholomew  of  Birds         231 

of  all  animals  and  the  most  terrible  scourge  to 
bird  life — the  vanishing  wild  life — of  America. 
"True  sportsmen,"  "pot  hunters,"  "the  negro  with 
the  $3  gun"  all  together  do  not  begin  to  kill  as 
many  birds  as  dear,  innocent  Tabby.  Some- 
where around  300,000,000  annually  is  supposed 
to  be  a  fair  estimate  of  puss's  destruction  of  game 
and  insectivorous  birds. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  the  cat  fears  no  law 
and  knows  no  master;  you  cannot  train  his  claws 
not  to  rend,  nor  his  teeth  not  to  tear.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  a  creature  that  has  taken  pos- 
session of  the  home  is  bound  to  be  protected  by  the 
affection  of  the  whole  household  and  much  in  the 
way  of  education  will  be  required  to  dislodge  it. 
The  cat  menace  to  bird  life  is  ten  times  as  great  in 
the  South  as  in  the  North,  for  there,  the  animals 
breed  to  starvation  lines  and  the  milder  climate 
seems  favorable  to  Tabby's  attaining  length  of 
days;  her  nine  lives  being  increased  to  at  least 
eighteen. 

Sportsmen  are  only  comparatively  recently  fac- 
ing the  killing  off  of  whole  species  and  the  best  in- 
formed among  their  number,  are  appalled  by  facts 
that  no  longer  can  be  ignored.  They  quite  gen- 
erally admit  the  Massacre  of  the  Passenger 
Pigeon,  but  the  latest  palliation  is  the  statement 
that  it  was  a  good  thing  for  the  farmer.  The 
threatened  excinction  of  Ducks  comes  home  to 


232     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

them  and  they  protest  against  the  general  massa- 
cre of  the  past. 

Close  upon  the  heels  of  worry  among  sportsmen 
over  the  disappearance  of  the  wild  pigeon  and  the 
early  extinction  of  the  prairie  chicken,  comes  pre- 
diction of  the  end  of  the  mallard  duck.  An  East- 
ern writer  observes : 

"Formerly  mallards  existed  in  abundance,  hard 
to  realize  at  the  present  time.  Until  after  the  war 
(1861-1865)  the  ponds  of  middle  South  Carolina 
supported  millions  of  them  each  winter.  The 
noise  of  their  flight  sometimes  deafened  one. 
They  were  killed  by  the  wagonload.  At  Big  Lake, 
Arkansas,  in  the  winter  of  1893-1894,  a  single 
pot  hunter  sold  8000  mallards,  and  120,000  were 
sent  to  market.  In  Calcasieu  parish,  Louisiana, 
last  winter  250,000  mallards  were  killed.  Hun- 
dreds of  tons  were  killed  at  Lake  Malheur,  Ore- 
gon, for  their  feathers.  In  Canada  and  along  the 
many  lakes  up  to  Hudson  Bay,  duck  eggs  were 
sold  by  the  million,  their  contents  to  be  used  in 
glue  factories  and  for  the  refining  of  sugar/' 

The  Superior  Telegram,  deploring  the  ruthless 
treatment  of  the  mallard,  contrasts  him  with  the 
wild  pigeon  to  the  latter's  disadvantage.  The 
bird,  it  says,  was  a  good  riddance,  though  tooth- 
some when  young  and  fat.  The  farming  industry 
could  not  afford  to  maintain  him,  because  he  was 
a  vegetarian,  and  never  harmed  an  insect.  The 


A  Saint  Bartholomew  of  Birds         233 

mallard,  on  the  other  hand,  robs  nobody.  "He 
lives  on  the  cresses  and  celeries  of  the  waters,  and 
his  flesh  is  superior  to  that  of  his  canvasback  or 
redhead  cousin.  Every  state  ought  to  take  meas- 
ures to  conserve  him,  else  soon  we  shall  know  him 
no  more.n  What  is  needed  in  addition  to  game 
laws  is  public  sentiment  backed  by  public  spirit 
that  will  condemn  their  non-observance.  Without 
enlightened  civic  consciousness  on  the  subject  of 
protecting  the  wild  birds,  their  numbers  will  rapid- 
ly decrease,  and  beyond  question  a  time  will  come 
when  the  multiplication  of  insect  pests  will  avenge 
the  slaughter  of  the  feathered  races. 

Most  of  the  hunting  on  our  Lake,  is  at  the 
Head,  or  down  at  the  inlet ;  both  localities  having 
a  more  or  less  variety  of  attractive  duck  food. 
At  the  head  the  ducks  cross  from  their  feeding 
ground  on  a  near-by  marshy  lake  to  the  protection 
of  the  open  water  of  our  lake  and  were  frequently 
slaughtered  in  great  numbers,  night  and  morning, 
on  the  portage  between  the  lakes.  If  there  are 
Ducks  anywhere  you  can  safely  count  on  finding 
a  goodly  number  at  the  inlet.  When  the  country 
was  first  settled  Adolph  Buzze  not  infrequently 
used  to  bring  a  "Dugout"  full  from  the  inlet,  the 
result  of  a  few  hours'  shooting.  Adolph  was  ut- 
terly without  education,  as  we  understand  the 
meaning  of  the  word,  though  he  actually  under- 
stood more  than  the  average  man,  the  mystery  of 


234     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

the  teeming  life  in  the  world  about  him.  Though 
he  may  often  have  wandered  and  lost  his  way, 
every  trail  he  followed  led  him  back  to  God.  Sim- 
ple minded,  good  hearted,  he  hunted  and  trapped 
as  he  chopped  wood  to  support  his  family.  He 
was  a  "pot  hunter,"  an  epithet  of  loathing  and 
contempt  to  every  "true  sportsman,"  and  it  is  at 
men  of  this  class  that  all  of  our  protective  game 
laws  are  aimed. 

The  other  day  a  very  different  style  of  a  man 
hunted  at  the  inlet.  Everything  about  him  was 
strictly  up-to-date,  or  rather  of  the  1919  model. 
He  was  the  antipode  of  Adolph,  the  "pot  hunter," 
he  killed  for  sport,  as  every  true  sportsman  does. 
In  the  twilight  of  a  November  day  he  came  into 
his  store  with  a  single  trophy,  a  solitary  Mallard, 
the  only  living  thing  that  he  had  seen  to  shoot 
at,  down  at  the  inlet.  He  gave  an  animated  de- 
scription of  his  kill:  UI  thought  I  was  going  to  be 
'skunked'  when  I  saw  the  vagabond  in  the  rushes 
near  shore.  He  let  me  come  so  close  that  a  first 
I  thought  he  must  have  a  broken  wing  and  could 
not  fly,  but  just  as  Billy  was  going  to  give  him  one 
with  the  paddle  he  got  up  like  a  flash  and  I  natu- 
rally blew  that  green  head  of  his  into  the  middle 
of  next  week."  There  were  not  wanting  those 
who  laughed  and  called  him  lucky  in  letting  noth- 
ing get  away,  and  none  had  any  appreciation  of 
the  fact  that  it  was  a  wounded  or  a  sick  bird  that 


A  Saint  Bartholomew  of  Birds         235 

had  furnished  the  animated  target  for  one  who 
only  shot  according  to  law  in  the   "Open  Sea- 


son." 


A  leading  business  man,  and  an  exceptionally 
fine  fellow,  who  has  hunted  all  his  life,  said  only 
yesterday:  "I  have  only  recently  learned  that  I 
can  get  my  necessary  exercise  out  of  doors  at  Golf 
and  am  no  longer  lending  a  hand  in  helping  de- 
stroy our  vanishing  wild  life." 

When  Theodore  Roosevelt  was  collecting  ma- 
terial for  his  bloody  "African  Game  Trails,"  his 
friend  and  admirer,  John  Burroughs,  said  of  his 
passion  to  kill  things :  "Later  on  he'll  slough  this 
off." 

Is  it  too  much  to  hope  that  America,  the  most 
progressive  and  civilized  country  on  the  face  of 
the  earth,  will:  "Later  on  slough  off"  an  "Open 
Season"? 

In  a  general  way  it  is  better  to  look  ahead  than 
to  look  backward,  but  progress  must  be  measured 
by  the  backward  look.  Everything  is  comparative 
and  conditions  actually  bad,  showing  betterment 
are  not  without  hope.  It  is  the  wide  view  that 
often  makes  Giant  Despair,  at  the  mouth  of  his 
cave,  look  like  a  single  plant  louse  on  the  thorny 
stem  of  Time. 

Our  Government  needs  ammunition  to  fight 
the  great  battle  for  world-wide  Democracy,  but 
the  "true  sportsman"  needs  his  recreation  and  we 


236     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

hear  nothing  of  any  restriction  on  the  amount  of 
fixed  ammunition  to  be  poured  into  our  vanishing 
wild  life,  during  the  coming  "open  season."  The 
slaughter  of  our  bird  neighbors  for  sport  is  a 
shameful  reversion  to  savage  ancestors — I  beg 
pardon  of  these  same  ancestors — they  were  sav- 
ages but  not  guilty  of  that  civilized,  smug,  blood- 
thirstiness.  However  great  the  discouragements 
of  our  immediate  surroundings,  the  wide  look 
shows  real  progress  in  bird  protection.  If  straws 
show  in  what  direction  the  wind  blows,  the  tiny 
fact  that  Metropolitan  Newspapers  are  devoting 
space  to  bird  lore  indicates  a  better  future  for  our 
birds.  May  we  not  go  farther  and  see  the  ap- 
proach of  Halcyon  days  in  that  future  when  we 
find  reference  in  a  department  of  "Woods  and 
Waters,"  to  the  kingfisher  as  a  brother  fisher- 
man? 

Oh!  soul  of  mine  remember, 
There  is  really  naught  to  fear, 
The  days  are  growing  brighter, 
Each  day  throughout  the  year. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

SOME  INVISIBLE  DEFENDERS 

In  one  of  our  recent  magazines  there  were  seven 
articles  pertaining  to  the  world  war,  and  one, 
beautifully  illustrated,  giving  some  account  of  an- 
other army,  rarely  noticed  by  the  average  person, 
whose  annual  campaign  against  hordes  of  noxious 
insects  saves  every  forest  in  America.  This  is 
no  insignificant  Council  of  Defence,  working  for 
the  general  good,  unhonored  and  unsung. 

Igdrasil,  according  to  Norse  mythology,  is 
the  ash  tree  of  existence,  and  all  life  is  represented 
by  this  fabulous  tree.  The  winds  among  its 
branches  are  both  shouting  and  whispering  the 
messages  of  Igdrasil.  The  forests  are  its 
children  and  lovingly,  devotedly,  the  birds  watch 
and  protect  these  children,  scattered  so  widely 
over  the  face  of  the  earth.  All  flesh  is  grass, 
and  grass,  protected  by  the  bird  soldier,  stands 
for  food  and  nourishment,  but  the  tree  has  its 
direct  relationships,  vast  and  tender,  with  home, 
and  home  in  very  fact  is  the  substance  of  things 
hoped  for.  The  singing  army  going  through  the 

237 


238     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

tree-tops  is  in  reality  providing  you  with  a  roof- 
tree  and  a  back-log,  and  this  Dr.  Henshaw,  in  the 
"National  Geographic  Magazine,"  the  one  re- 
ferred to,  calls  "A  Supreme  Service."  Think  of 
it;  an  aviation  service,  raining  only  blessings  upon 
the  earth. 

There  is  not  a  tree,  symbol  of  strength  and 
beauty  and  receiving  station  for  messages  from  the 
unseen,  that  did  not  have  hundreds  of  insect  ene- 
mies waiting  for  it  when  it  came  into  existence, 
and  without  the  immediate  protection  of  the  birds 
would  have  been  quickly  destroyed,  and  on  the 
other  hand,  there  is  not  a  giant  among  all  the 
trees  of  the  forest  who  would  long  exist  without 
its  Guardian  Angel,  the  bird  soldier.  The  only 
real  fairy  stories  are  the  ones  that  are  actually 
taking  place  around  us  all  the  time,  but  for  which 
we  have  no  eyes.  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was 
not  apparelled  like  many  of  our  birds,  and  their 
service  belongs  to  a  vaster  temple  than  he  ever 
dreamed  of — a  temple  not  made  with  hands,  in 
which  music  and  service  are  one  and  inseparable. 

Now  that  the  war  is  over  and  the  professional 
tree  slaughter  is  organizing  to  meet  an  unpre- 
cedented demand  for  lumber  of  all  kinds,  the  Na- 
tion's sylvan  treasury  will  be  ruthlessly  exploited 
as  never  before.  It  almost  seems  as  though  both 
the  tree  and  the  bird  soldier  are  doomed,  but  the 
apprehension  must  give  place  to  greater  determi- 


Some  Invisible  Defenders  239 

nation  to  conserve  both.  The  poor  narrow-mind- 
ed lumberman,  who  sees  in  a  tree  only  possible 
lumber  must  be  made  to  dip  into  the  future  and 
conserve  a  natural  resource  for  his  children  and 
his  children's  children,  protecting  and  renewing 
rather  than  destroying.  God  save  the  world  from 
the  greed  of  ignorant  little  men. 

Arrogance  and  ignorance  shroud  the  morning 
and  the  evening  of  existence  of  the  dyed-in-the- 
wool  money  grubber,  who  would  sell  his  Lord  for 
fifteen  pieces  of  silver  if  he  could  not  get  thirty. 
To  them,  outside  of  a  sordid  commercialism,  there 
is  nothing;  and  were  beauty  and  song  exposed  on 
the  block,  among  them  all  there  would  not  be 
found  a  single  bidder.  People  who  know  all  can't 
be  told  a  single  thing. 

That  we  are  the  people  and  wisdom  will  die 
with  us,  is  probably  the  conviction  of  most  races 
of  human  beings.  Any  idea  of  kinship  with  other 
forms  of  life  is  not  to  be  tolerated;  we  are  the 
proud  possessors  of  a  god-like  reason,  the  brute 
creation  of  a  blind  instinct  far  removed  from 
man's  lofty  endowment.  Such  a  belief  makes 
easier  the  universally  accepted  notion  of  a  divinely 
given  dominion  over  the  beasts  of  the  fields  and 
the  fowls  of  the  air  and  all  that  passeth  through 
the  depths  of  the  sea.  Careful  investigation  goes 
to  show  that  there  is  not  such  a  mighty  chasm 
between  reason  and  instinct  as  has  been  commonly 


240     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

supposed  to  separate  us  from  our  little  brothers  of 
the  field  and  forest.  The  word  instinct  is  a  blan- 
ket term  covering  a  world  of  ignorance.  When  a 
toothless  old  man  soaks  his  crust  in  his  coffee,  the 
act  is  prompted  by  reason ;  when  a  duck,  that  has 
only  rudimentary  salivary  glands  carries  a  hard 
crust  some  little  distance  to  soak  it  in  water,  it 
acts  from  instinct.  A  man  through  local  attach- 
ment prompted  by  reason,  may  travel  across  a  con- 
tinent to  get  back  to  the  place  of  his  birth ;  but  a 
wild  duck,  hatched  in  an  incubator,  may  have 
the  same  kind  of  local  attachment,  prompting  it  to 
leave  a  body  of  water,  its  native  element,  and  cross 
a  busy  street  that  it  might  again  enjoy  a  familiar 
environment  in  close  contact  with  human  crea- 
tures, the  barrier  of  fear  having  been  broken 
down.  Instinct  is  a  great  matter  for  it  enabled 
the  wild  ducks,  spoken  of  above,  to  find  their  way 
back  over  a  road  that  they  had  never  seen,  over 
which  a  man  with  all  his  reason  might  have  wan- 
dered and  lost  his  way.  It  is  said  of  man  that 
"Joy  and  grief  and  hope  and  fear  alternate  tri- 
umph in  his  breast,"  as  though  these  were  the 
distinguishing  qualities  of  the  great  gift  of  rea- 
son, but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  dumb  creatures,  with 
only  instinct  for  a  guide,  are  not  strangers  to  like 
emotions.  True  religion  and  undefiled  is  in  a 
recognition  of  the  inestimable  value  of  life,  that 
the  highest  and  lowest  hold  in  common,  something 


Some  Invisible  Defenders  241 

to  be  guarded  with  the  greatest  care  and  never 
recklessly  sacrificed.  Love  and  pity  are  two  angels 
guarding  a  sacred  flame  that  once  extinguished 
may  not  be  rekindled — Love's  Red  Cross  protect- 
ing all  life.  "He  who  in  his  own  soul  perceives 
the  supreme  soul  in  all  beings,  and  acquires  equa- 
nimity toward  them  all,  attains  the  highest  state  of 
bliss." 

According  to  high  authority,  civilization  means 
"to  reclaim  from  a  savage  state;  instruct  in  the 
arts  and  refinements  of  civilized  life."  Thus  we 
are  taught  to  regard  civilization  and  not  savagery 
as  the  adornments  of  a  condition  of  splendid  prog- 
ress. Facts  are  stubborn  things  and  lend  no  coun- 
tenance to  such  very  superficial  conclusions.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  centuries  grow  weary  over 
the  slowness  of  the  thing  we  call  civilization  as  it 
creeps  in  petty  pace  from  age  to  age.  Man  has 
spent  Aeons  in  getting  on  his  hind  feet,  and  it 
seems  as  though  more  Aeons  will  have  to  drift 
down  the  abyss  of  time  before  he  is  really  re- 
claimed from  his  innate  savagery.  To  civilize  is 
a  process;  civilization  a  dream.  The  arts  flour- 
ish and  refinement  dies. 

The  soul  of  refinement  is  consideration  for 
everything  that  lives.  A  universal  sense  of  com- 
passion for  every  form  of  being  that  in  common 
with  ourselves,  fears  and  would  escape  death. 
Across  the  beautiful  Lawson  Road,  between  the 


242     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

Maplewood  and  the  village  of  Green  Lake,  I  re- 
cently found  the  bloody  body  of  a  mother  Coot 
done  to  death  by  some  fine  gentleman,  to  whom 
the  creature  was  but  an  animated  target.  He  gave 
no  thought  of  a  possible  callow  brood  in  a  nest 
that  stood  for  skill  and  mother  love,  where  waters 
dream  and  green  flags  tell  their  story  to  the  pass- 
ing breeze.  Peradventure  his  friends  congratu- 
lated him  on  his  skill  as  a  mighty  hunter;  no  stain 
of  blood,  in  the  estimation  of  people  of  the  high- 
est refinement,  follows  such  a  petty  murder. 

Here  is  the  whole  thing  in  a  nutshell.  Humane 
education  is  preparedness  for  Civilization. 

There  is  a  story  that  after  all  their  defeats 
when  the  victorious  army  of  crusaders  marched 
into  the  Holy  City,  all  comrades  who  had  been 
killed  in  battle,  and  from  disease  had  fallen  out 
by  the  way,  joined  the  army  once  more  to  take 
part  in  the  final  triumph.  It  is  not  only  a  pretty 
story  but  is  symbolical  of  the  way  victories  are 
won  to-day ;  thus  are  all  battles  fought  by  the  liv- 
ing and  the  dead,  the  visible  and  the  invisible.  In 
the  late  war  in  Europe,  take  our  part  in  it;  Grant 
and  Sherman,  Lee  and  Stonewall  Jackson  were 
Pershing's  Aids,  and  Washington  and  Lincoln 
stand  close  to  Woodrow  Wilson.  Woe  to  that 
nation  or  that  cause  that  has  no  invisible  defend- 
ers. Visible  orators  are  as  children  playing  in  the 
market  place  compared  to  the  deathless  eloquence 


Some  Invisible  Defenders  243 

of  those  whom  we  call  dead.  What  matter  if  the 
body  lies  mouldering  in  the  grave  so  long  as  the 
soul  goes  marching  on?  The  death  of  Audubon 
in  no  way  interfered  with  his  work  as  poet-natu- 
ralist— a  real  John  the  Baptist  in  the  wilderness 
preparing  the  way  for  all  naturalists  who  could 
but  follow  after  him  along  the  trail  he  blazed. 
Among  the  living  of  to-day  there  is  not  to  be  found 
among  bird-students  another  whose  work  and  in- 
fluence is  to  be  compared  in  virile  force  and  power 
of  inspiration  with  the  first  Commander-in-Chief 
of  the  present  army  of  bird-lovers.  William  Dut- 
cher,  voiceless,  speechless  for  nearly  ten  years, 
through  the  influence  of  the  Audubon  Society, 
never  spoke  more  eloquently  in  all  his  useful,  beau- 
tiful life  than  to-day.  Audubon  and  Dutcher 
rank  high  as  two  mighty  invisible  defenders  of 
the  bird  kingdom  and  those  on  the  firing  line  had 
as  well  pull  down  their  flag,  were  it  not  for  them 
and  all  other  invisible  defenders  of  our  vanishing 
wild  life. 

If  bird-lovers  were  without  the  spiritual  in- 
sight that  sees  in  death  no  intimation  of  the  less- 
ening of  a  man's  ability  to  still  further  his  own 
work,  the  passing  of  Theodore  Roosevelt  would 
be  a  cause  for  putting  on  crepe,  and  hearing  in 
bird-song  a  vast,  sad  requiem.  As  President,  he 
established  the  principle  of  government  bird-reser- 
vations, and  created  thirty-eight  of  these  national 


244     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

wild-life  sanctuaries.  He  was  a  man  of  the  out- 
of-doors,  a  hunter  and  a  bird-lover.  It  was  said 
of  him  that  "he  shot  lions  with  a  rifle  and  birds 
with  a  field  glass.  The  second  sport  he  loved 
better  than  the  first."  How  much  of  a  real  bird- 
lover  he  was  is  just  becoming  known  and  the 
world  is  going  to  remember  him  not  on  account 
of  the  lions,  or  other  wild  animals  he  killed  and 
thus  preserved,  but  for  the  efforts  he  put  forth  to 
make  bird  protection  respectable  and  popular. 
The  statesman  and  the  writer  will  now  be  merged 
into  the  invisible  defender  of  the  invisible  de- 
fenders of  forest  and  field  and  all  growing  things. 
"Mourny,"  "Moses,"  "Mr.  Esau"  and  "Can- 
ada" have  long  been  dead,  but  death,  only  made 
them,  through  me,  invisible  defenders  of  things 
very  much  alive.  The  hard  bitter  materialism  so 
dominant  in  life  to-day  has  to  be  reckoned  with 
and  we  have  to  learn  the  lesson  of  a  higher,  finer 
civilization  that  takes  cognizance  of  the  invisible 
and  spiritual  that  moves  the  obvious  and  material. 
I,  for  one,  love  to  think  of  every  hard  dollar 
that  Mrs.  Russell  Sage  gave  to  establish  a  Bird- 
refuge  in  the  South,  for  instance,  as  being  trans- 
muted into  tender  spiritual  impulses  for  better 
things  that  invisibly  will  flow  on  and  on  so  long 
as  Hope  shall  prompt  Love  to  conquer  human 
-selfishness. 


Some  Invisible  Defenders  245 

The  vision  of  to-day  is  the  reality  of  to-morrow 
and  on  the  reality  of  many  to-morrows,  faith  will 
stand  to  catch  the  visions  of  all  the  coming  years. 


CHAPTER  XX 

GETTING  ACQUAINTED 

In  whatever  direction  we  turn,  we  are  con- 
fronted with  certain  visible  or  invisible  barriers 
that  have  to  be  surmounted  before  any  progress 
can  be  made.  Indeed  we  are  strangers  and  pil- 
grims here  and  will  so  remain  unless  we  become 
acquainted  with  our  environment  and  make  friends 
with  other  forms  of  life.  In  the  oldest  Poem  in 
the  language  is  this  imperative  command:  "Ac- 
quaint now  thyself  with  Him  and  be  at  peace; 
thereby  good  shall  come  unto  thee."  The  thought 
is  self-evident.  Immediate  acquaintance,  imme- 
diate peace,  and  both  followed  by  unqualified  good. 
Taking  the  old  commandment  to  pieces,  in  an- 
other way  it  may  be  justly  inferred  that  acquaint- 
ance has  been  procrastinated  and  there  has  been 
no  realization  that  there  is  a  benediction  of  peace 
following  knowledge.  The  ancients  located  truth 
at  the  bottom  of  a  well  and  we  are  just  learning 
that  good  flows  only  in  certain  fixed  channels, 
knowledge  finds  the  channels. 

Knowledge  is  that  quality  that  enables  us  to 
246 


Getting  Acquainted  247 

recognize  what  is  best.  Knowledge  is  the  Drago- 
man among  ancient  Pyramids,  and  the  interpreter 
of  whispering  winds  and  the  song  of  the  open  road. 
Yesterday,  its  garden  of  memory,  to-day,  its  work- 
shop, to-morrow,  its  mount  of  visions.  The  police 
dog  that  made  the  trip  from  San  Diego  to  New 
York  and  return,  with  Major  Albert  Smith 
through  the  air,  learned  precious  little  of  the 
country  over  which  he  passed.  And  so  it  is  with 
us  who  make  the  journey  of  the  years  and  fail  to 
acquaint  ourselves  with  our  environment.  I  sup- 
pose the  person  who  travels  far  and  learns  noth- 
ing, might  as  well  have  remained  at  home  and  the 
one  who  goes  through  life  without  learning  any- 
thing might  just  as  well  have  never  been  born. 
All  education  is  just  getting  acquainted,  finding 
out  things  about  things  that  actually  exist.  A  real 
teacher  is  a  way  shower  and  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  fellow  who  pretends  to  be  able  to  sell  you 
a  big  chunk  of  knowledge  that  you  can  carry  home 
with  you,  to  be  wrapped  up  in  a  sheep-skin,  the 
sheep-skin  to  be  used  to  burnish  the  family  escut- 
cheon. 

Erudition  would  lose  most  of  its  strut  and  fan- 
like  tail  feathers  if  people  only  knew  that  back 
of  its  fuss  and  feathers,  it  simply  stands  for  get- 
ting acquainted. 

I  have  looked  out  of  a  car  window  and  counted 
as  we  rolled  by,  two  hundred  and  fifty  telegraph 


248     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

poles.  I  knew  them  as  telegraph  poles,  they  all 
looked  alike,  there  was  no  question  of  the  cor- 
rectness of  my  identification  of  them,  but  there 
was  a  lot  of  facts  concerning  them  of  which  I 
knew  nothing.  For  many  years  I  was  the  owner 
of  two  hundred  and  fifty  sheep.  I  knew  that  they 
were  sheep  and  looked  much  alike  and  there  was 
no  question  of  the  correctness  of  my  identification 
of  the  kind  of  animal  that  I  called  a  sheep.  How- 
ever, my  knowledge  did  not  stop  with  a  few  facts, 
as  it  did  in  the  case  of  the  telegraph  poles,  for  all 
my  life  I  had  a  close  and  intimate  acquaintance 
with  sheep,  beginning  with  a  single  individual  when 
I  was  a  lad.  I  came  to  know  this  individual  so 
well  that  when  more  were  added  and  I  became 
the  owner  of  a  little  flock,  each  remained  an  indi- 
vidual, and  when,  much  later  in  life,  I  owned  the 
big  flock,  each  had  its  individuality  as  much  as  two 
hundred  horses  I  have  owned  and  a  thousand  head 
of  cattle. 

I  knew  my  horses  and  cattle  by  name,  and  the 
faces  and  voices  and  personality  of  every  sheep 
in  my  flock.  Just  as  soon  as  you  come  to 
know  things  as  individuals,  they  cease  to  look 
alike.  I  was  making  an  address  not  so  long  ago 
to  an  audience  of  tourists,  most  of  whom  were 
well  past  middle  life  and  few  of  whom  I  knew 
personally,  and  I  remember  of  having  thought 
that  among  them  was  a  general  resemblance  great- 


Getting  Acquainted  249 

er  than  among  the  last  flock  of  sheep  which  I  sold 
twenty  years  ago  and  some  of  whose  faces  I  still 
remember.  Those  I  remember  best  had  names 
and  nick  names;  their  faces  are  unforgettable. 
Beginning  with  the  first  colt  I  owned,  when  I  was 
fourteen  years  of  age,  I  can  give  not  only  his 
name  and  color,  but  his  minute  history — his  per- 
sonality— and  that  is  equally  true  of  at  least  a 
hundred  and  ninety  successors  to  skittish,  panicky 
Cruser. 

Now  I  suppose  that  it  would  be  possible  to  find 
at  the  stock  yards  in  Chicago,  individuals  who 
have  bought  and  sold  millions  of  sheep,  who  have 
utterly  failed  to  learn  as  much  of  the  animal 
as  an  animal  from  their  millions,  as  I  learned 
from  my  individual  cosset  lamb. 

I  know  a  man  who,  in  the  last  forty  years,  has 
approximately  prepared  and  mounted  the  skins 
of  ten  thousand  birds,  but,  while  thus  in  close 
contact  with  birds,  so  far  as  really  learning  any- 
thing of  the  real  life  of  the  creature  he  handled, 
its  possibilities  and  limitations,  its  good  and  evil, 
its  individuality  and  personality;  he  might  as  well 
have  spent  his  time  sawing  wood.  Indeed,  I  think 
that  the  more  a  man  knows  of  the  inside  of  a  bird, 
the  less  he  knows  about  the  outside;  the  more  he 
knows  of  a  bird  scientifically,  the  less  he  is  apt  to 
know  about  the  creature's  aesthetic,  spiritual,  com- 
panionable worth. 


250     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

"To  the  making  of  books  there  is  no  end," 
said  the  wise  man,  before  the  invention  of  the 
art  of  printing,  and  now,  when  they  are  being 
scattered  broad-cast  like  the  leaves  of  Autumn,  I 
feel  that  a  man  should  have  some  pretty  valid 
excuse  for  presuming  to  add  another  to  an  already 
discouraging  number.  Now  that  my  little  craft 
is  on  the  ways  preparatory  to  launching,  I  feel 
that  I  must  make  this  matter  clear  and  give  my 
excuse  for  another  bird  book.  It  seems  to  me, 
that  so  far,  every  writer  on  the  subject  has  been 
possessed  to  tell  what  he  has  done  with  birds,  and 
I  approach  the  subject  in  an  entirely  opposite 
direction,  in  an  entirely  opposite  spirit;  while  I 
admit  the  scientific  side  of  bird  study  as  valu- 
able within  stern  limitations,  I  am  dealing  with 
things  alive,  interesting,  beautiful,  wonderful, 
with  scarcely  an  exception,  as  a  whole,  valuable 
beyond  all  computation,  and  individuals  among 
them  ranking  high  among  my  most  valued  helpful 
friends.  Where  it  purports  to  be  history,  it  is 
real  history  and  while  I  have  been  telling  of  what 
birds  have  done  for  me,  I  have  not  dared  to  tell 
how  much  they  have  done  or  how  great  their  influ- 
ence has  been.  I  will  fail  utterly  if  I  fail  to  give 
the  personal  touch;  leaving  your  hearts  unmoved 
by  my  portrayal  of  the  adorable  little  ways  of 
some  of  my  adorable  little  friends.  The  only 


Getting  Acquainted  251 

magic  I  have  discussed  has  been  the  magic  of 
real  friendship,  my  sympathies  always  on  the  side 
of  the  hunted  and  always  protesting  against  the 
killer  who  killed  for  fun. 

Here  is  the  general  law  that  governs  all  ac- 
quaintance with  animate  things;  from  an  intimate 
acquaintance  with  individuals  of  a  race  we  ar- 
rive at  a  general  acquaintance  with  all  the  mem- 
bers of  that  race.  Thinking  of  members  of  the 
human  race,  for  instance,  as  Japs,  Slavs  and 
Orientals,  is  conclusive  evidence  that  intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  members  of  those  races  has  not 
enabled  us  to  sink  out  of  sight  the  big  blur  of 
Nationality.  Personality  and  friendship  quickly 
efface  the  mere  tag  of  racial  distinction  and  aloof- 
ness. We  only  know  them  when  we  know  their 
mentality,  their  place  in  the  scheme  of  Nature, 
their  possible  comradeship  and  affection. 

John  Sawyer,  a  Jap  in  my  class  in  the  Uni- 
versity, whose  name  we  could  never  learn  to  pro- 
nounce, and  so  called  him  that — stands  to  me  for 
all  his  race.  Intellectually  brilliant,  gentle,  kind- 
ly, his  personality,  over  enormous  handicaps,  car- 
ried him  forward  to  popularity,  and  though  none 
of  us  had  seen  his  like  before,  he  won  the  friend- 
ship of  all.  After  going  back  to  his  own  country 
he  wrote  me,  I  presume  as  a  joke,  quite  a  long  let- 
ter in  his  own  language,  not  one  word  of  which  I 


252     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

have  been  able  to  decipher,  and  I  not  only  still 
cherish  it,  but  what  is  more,  I  never  got  so  much 
out  of  any  other  letter. 

I  never  thought  of  Robins  as  a  kind  of  bird 
bearing  that  name,  but  to  me  they  are  all  the  rela- 
tives of  "Big-Bellied  Hen,"  with  whose  amazing 
history  I  became  familiar  while  still  in  kilts.  Fig- 
uratively speaking,  I  never  see  a  "Cock-Robin" 
without  looking  around  apprehensively  for  the 
"Sparrow  with  his  Bow-and-Arrow."  Naturally 
under  these  circumstances,  I  feel  that  I  do  well 
to  be  angry  when  the  Biological  Survey,  having 
charge  of  the  enforcement  of  the  Federal  Migra- 
tory Law,  yawns  and  asks  the  time  of  day  when 
I  send  them  an  account  of  a  Negro  having  in  his 
possession  "A  Barrel  of  Pickled  Robins."  How 
many  doves  would  it  take  to  mourn  for  a  barrel 
of  dead  Robins?  Not  enough  I  fancy  to  reach  the 
ears  of  the  officials  at  Washington. 

Going  back  to  those  sheep  again.  A  few  years 
ago  I  was  being  taken  to  a  Hospital  for  an  opera- 
tion that  promised  one  chance  of  recovery  in  five 
thousand  and  the  auto,  in  which  I  had  been  placed 
to  ride  from  the  Station  to  the  Hospital,  was 
stopped  almost  as  soon  as  we  got  started,  by  a 
vast  flock  of  sheep  on  their  way  to  the  stock  yards 
and  the  shambles.  Their  voices  awoke  ten  thou- 
sand old  memories  and  I  scrutinized  each  passing 
face  for  resemblance  to  "Nan  and  Lilly"  my  two 


Getting  Acquainted  253 

first  Cosset  lambs,  and  was  relieved  that  there 
was  not  a  familiar  look  on  a  single  face.  Even 
here,  I  was  generalizing  from  "Nan  and  Lilly,'7  to 
a  personal  knowledge  of  a  whole  bleating  race. 
It  had  been  the  night  before  when  the  passing 
flock  of  wild  Geese  right  over  the  house  called  me 
back  from  the  coma  into  which  I  seemed  to  be 
sinking.  Dead  "Canada"  was  the  leader  and  was 
pointing  the  way  to  the  still  waters  that  would 
quench  my  intolerable  thirst.  Now  I  might  have 
shot  and  dressed  and  cooked  a  score  of  Geese,  and 
eaten  a  different  part  of  each  without  coming  to 
know  a  thing  worth  while  about  "Canada,"  "The 
element  of  life  in  God's  great  picture  of  Autumn." 
Once  upon  a  time  (as  all  true  stories  begin), 
we  occupied  my  wife's  Uncle's  Cottage  in  Florida, 
and  the  Post  Master  and  general  merchant  in  the 
near-by  village,  wanting  to  discharge  some  obli- 
gation to  this  Uncle,  came  with  guns,  dogs,  Ponies, 
and  Buck-Board  to  take  me  hunting.  He  certain- 
ly had  not  come  because  he  knew  me,  and  had 
planned  the  expedition  because  he  did  not  know 
me.  We  drove  directly  to  an  entirely  deserted 
village  four  miles  away,  where  private  informa- 
tion had  reached  him  that  game  was  simply  wait- 
ing to  be  killed.  And  so  it  proved,  for  we  had  not 
hitched  the  Ponies  in  an  old  shed  before  he  dis- 
covered an  immense  covey  of  Quail  in  the  rank 
growth  of  weeds  not  ten  feet  away.  He  thrust 


254     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

a  cocked  double-barreled  shot  gun  into  my  hands 
and  said  in  a  tense  whisper:  "Give  'em  one  bar- 
rel on  the  ground  and  the  next,  when  they  get  up." 
I  am  surprised  that  I  heard  him,  for,  in  some  un- 
accountable way,  I  was  back  in  that  Wisconsin 
swamp  where  I  had  helped  round  up  the  oxen  on 
that  far  way  June  morning,  and  these  tiny  feath- 
ered things  did  not  look  much  larger  than  "Mrs. 
Stumpy's  chicks"  and  not  nearly  as  wild.  For 
some  reason  this  covey  had  not  been  hunted  and 
were  unafraid.  If  very  hungry,  I  might  have 
done  it,  or  if  wife  or  children  needed  meat,  but 
kill  a  Bob  White,  a  thing  in  a  wide  sense  related 
to  "Mrs.  Stumpy,"  for  fun;  that  I  could  not  do. 
I  scarcely  remember  how  I  tried  to  square  myself, 
I  know  it  was  no  use  to  try  to  make  him  under- 
stand, and  I  was  quite  willing  to  have  him  think 
me  "bug-house." 

Only  last  winter  a  County  official  in  a  South- 
ern City,  with  an  auto,  and  dogs,  and  guns,  and 
another  mighty  hunter,  and  two  women  Dianas, 
pulled  up  in  front  of  a  Drug  Store  and  the  host 
called  his  father  out  to  see  the  spoil  of  a  two  days' 
hunt,  eighty  Bob  Whites.  The  white  haired  old 
gentleman,  and  he  was  a  gentleman,  congratulated 
the  party  with  beaming  face,  so  sorry  that  he 
could  not  have  had  a  hand  in  the  splendid  sport. 
Honestly,  I  did  not  understand  their  feeling  any 
more  than  they  could  understand  mine  while  we 


Getting  Acquainted  255 

were  both  looking  on  the  same  thing — a  string  of 
dead  birds.  I  grant  them  their  point  of  view, 
but  honestly,  had  the  string  been  Irish  potatoes 
instead  of  Quail  that  they  as  kitchen  police  in  a 
Cantonment,  during  the  world  war,  had  prepared 
for  use,  by  the  process  called  peeling,  I  would 
have  thought  it  much  more  worthy  of  congratula- 
tion. 

Somewhere,  I  have  seen  a  picture  of  a  mighty 
hunter,  with  a  wide,  wide  smile  on  his  refined  face, 
and  Duck,  and  Ducks,  and  Ducks,  and  more 
Ducks  festooning,  smothering  his  manly  form. 
Of  course  it  was  in  a  saloon,  where  only  moder- 
ate drinking  is  indulged  in,  and  the  joyous  com- 
pany is  celebrating  the  grand  victory  of  one  of 
their  own  number.  It  was  almost  like  the  ovation 
we  give  to  returning  soldiers  who  have  been  mak- 
ing the  world  safe  for  democracy.  I  do  not  see 
this  aggregation  of  dead  things  as  ducks,  but  as 
individual  ducks,  each  with  an  unknown  individu- 
ality and  personality,  with  somewhat  rudimentary 
traits  and  faculties  in  the  main,  but  with  other 
traits  far  surpassing  human  reason,  or  human  sen- 
timent. They  are  nearly  all  Mallards  and  I  knew 
a  certain  Green-headed  Mallard  who  opened  the 
door  into  the  secret  archives  of  his  race.  Else- 
where in  this  volume  I  have  told  of  "Mally's" 
mating  with  a  single  white  Pekin  Duck,  and  it 
will  be  easy  for  these  fine  gentlemen  to  under- 


256     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

stand  his  loyalty  and  devotion  to  his  choice  of  a 
single  mate  and  perhaps  they  will  take  off  their 
hats  to  world  voyagers,  even  though  they  have  to 
be  taken  home  by  the  police,  late  at  night. 

The  Rose-Breasted  Grosbeak  on  the  winter 
hat  of  the  florid  lady,  who  sits  just  in  front  of  us 
at  church,  is  no  kind  of  a  teacher  of  bird  lore  and 
I  am  fully  convinced  that  every  florid  and  devout 
lady  in  the  congregation  might  boast  the  same 
adornment,  the  aggregate  amounting  to  quite  a 
little  flock,  and  the  flock  would  leave  me  in  deep, 
dark  and  awful  ignorance  of  the  things  most 
worth  while  in  the  individuality  of  one  of  their 
number.  I  might  even  concentrate  upon  the  near- 
est bird,  before  and  after  the  prayer  and  from 
the  opening  hymn  to  the  Doxology,  without  learn- 
ing that  the  birds  present,  in  life,  could  have  made 
that  surpliced  Choir  sound  like  a  Hawaiian  Band. 
Intense  concentration  upon  the  possibilities  of  this 
bird  during  firstly,  secondly,  and  thirdly,  of  the 
long-winded  sermon,  might  still  have  left  me  in 
shameful  ignorance  of  the  fact  that  this  bird,  be- 
yond all  other  birds,  has  a  full-sized  appetite  for 
potato  bugs.  On  the  other  hand,  "Mr.  Esau" 
was  a  living  teacher  and  taught  me  all  I  need  to 
know  about  Grosbeaks,  and  at  the  close  of  the 
term  I  was  as  much  fed  up  with  knowledge  as  he, 
with  White  Grubs. 

"Mourny"  and  "Mr.  Moses"  were  my  primary 


Getting  Acquainted  257 

teachers;  "Mr.  Waxwing"  and  "Gooey  Bill" 
helped  me  through  the  grades,  and  the  Chicka- 
dees and  Crackles  saw  me  graduate  from  High 
School,  and  when  in  College  my  thesis  on :  "Yor- 
ick"  secured  for  me  my  degree  of  B.  M. — Bird 
Man.  I  am  not  quite  clear  on  this  point,  but 
fancy  that  I  may  have  been  admitted  to  the  Bar, 
as  "The  Birds'  Attorney"  when  I  used  to  take 
"Canada"  down  to  the  Lake  every  day  for  a 
swim. 

My  Father's  experience  as  a  teacher  had  mini- 
mized  the  value  to  be  obtained  exclusively  from 
School  Books,  and  he  gave  us  children  a  large  ad- 
mixture of  current  reading,  including  all  of  Dick- 
ens. The  characters  became  real  personages  to 
us  and  we  knew  them  just  as  well  as  we  knew  the 
people  in  the  near-by  village.  It's  not  an  ex- 
aggeration to  say  that  it  would  scarcely  have  sur- 
prised any  of  us  children  to  have  turned  the  corner 
and  come  face  to  face  with  Daniel  Quilp,  Sampson 
Brass,  or  Miss  Miggs,  any  more  than  it  would 
have  surprised  us  to  have  met  George  Hyer,  "Pug 
Hamilton"  and  Miss  Talker,  all  residents  of  the 
town,  whom  we  knew  as  well  as  we  knew  our  own 
names.  Later  on,  when  I  went  away  to  school,  I 
heard  to  my  utter  astonishment,  people  discus- 
sing Dickens'  works  in  a  well-bred  and  pedantic 
manner  and  yet  they  did  not  know  a  single  char- 
acter intimately,  and  would  not  have  stopped  to 


258     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

listen  if  they  had  heard  Barnaby  Rudge's  Raven 
saying:  "I'm  a  Devil,  I'm  a  Devil,  I'm  a  Devil." 
The  glib  talk  of  volumes,  ignoring  characters, 
seemed  most  vague  and  unsatisfactory,  as  though 
some  one  was  setting  up  to  have  acquired  a  thor- 
ough knowledge  of  China  by  memorizing  the 
names  of  all  the  different  kinds  of  tea  grown  in 
that  country. 

The  veil  of  a  temple  has  been  rent  and  you  are 
being  admitted  into  a  Holy  of  Holies  when  the 
barrier  of  fear  between  you  and  forms  of  wild  life 
is  rolled  up  like  a  scroll,  and  you  become  friends 
and  comrades. 

Is  it  not  a  shameful  thing  that  man,  the  image 
of  his  Maker,  is  an  object  of  terror  to  his  little 
brothers  of  the  field  and  forest?  Among  unnum- 
bered monsters,  there  is  nothing  else  that  inspires 
such  universal  fear,  such  a  mad  frenzy  of  appre- 
hension. They  will  complain  that  they  found  the 
game  wild.  Which  is  the  wilder,  the  hunted  or  the 
hunters?  These  wild  things  so  relentlessly  pur- 
sued to  their  death  were  naturally  tame  and  full 
of  confidence  till  man  made  of  himself  a  "scare- 
crow"— a  shamming  presentiment  of  evil. 

In  the  September  "Recreation"  there  is  a  pic- 
ture of  a  man,  sitting  on  the  ground,  a  grouse 
perched  on  his  arm.  Though  often  found  near 
human  habitations,  it  is  reckoned  among  our  wild- 
est birds.  A  lonely  U.  S.  mail  carrier,  in  a  bit  of 


Getting  Acquainted  259 

woods,  where  he  halts  for  dinner  and  to  feed  his 
horse,  convinces  this  shy  denizen  of  the  forest 
that  he  is  no  Killer,  and  in  no  time  they  are 
friends,  each  born  again  and  each  thrilled  by  the 
indescribable  joy  of  strange  intimacies. 

The  Canada  goose,  world  voyager  of  the  upper 
air,  a  vanishing  picture  of  the  day  and  a  weird 
voice  of  the  heavy  night,  is  commonly  regarded  as 
the  wildest  of  all  things,  and  yet  after  a  few  weeks 
of  the  close  relations  of  surgeon  and  patient  the 
barrier  of  fear  was  broken  down  and  my  wild 
goose  would  come  at  my  call  like  a  dog.  There  is 
no  miracle  about  this.  I  have  simply  ceased  to 
stand  for  the  most  gruesome,  hideous  thing  in 
all  the  Universe  of  God — an  eternal,  all-embrac- 
ing fear. 

Some  years  ago  an  American  writer  of  books 
gave  one  this  title:  "He  Fell  in  Love  With  His 
Wife,"  and,  though  I  never  read  the  book,  I  can 
imagine  that  the  feeling  must  have  been  akin  to 
that  experienced  by  the  man  who  starts  in  to  get 
really  well  acquainted  with  a  very  familiar  bird. 
It's  a  mutual  surprise  party,  they  knew  each  other 
so  well  and  yet  they  did  not  know  each  other  at 
all.  They  had  passed  the  time  of  day  for  years,  so 
to  speak,  but  never  for  a  single  hour  had  they 
paused  "to  loaf  and  invite  their  souls."  The  man 
who  fell  in  love  with  his  wife  was  a  worshipper  of 
beauty  and  his  own  wife  was  the  most  beautiful 


260     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

woman  in  the  world,  but  he  did  not  know  it.  He 
was  always  looking  for  comradeship  and  she  was 
the  only  person  who  could  share  fully  every 
thought  and  feeling  that  had  ever  swept  his  be- 
ing; his  parched  lips  had  been  seeking  gladness 
and  though  he  knew  it  not,  her  heart  was  its  over- 
flowing fountain.  Many  a  "Sir  Galahad"  has 
ridden  across  the  world  in  search  of  the  Holy 
Grail,  returning  old  and  blind  to  find  it  at  his  own 
door. 

"The  poor  you  have  ever  with  you,"  do  not 
pass  them  by  for  there  is  a  divinity  in  common 
things,  and  to  be  really  acquainted  with  simple 
forms  of  life  is  more  than  to  dwell  in  marble  halls. 
Though  far  from  the  madding  crowd,  having 
found  one  bird:  "a  fellow  of  infinite  jest  and 
most  excellent  fancy,"  let  us  be  content. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE    UNKNOWN   PATHWAY 

The  poetry  of  the  Book  of  Job  is  not  only 
something  that  takes  you  back  to  the  infancy  of 
Time,  but  with  its  minute  insight,  into  the  troubled 
heart  of  universal  man;  it  has  in  it  a  surge  and 
music  touching  the  sublime.  The  great  story 
teller  with  a  great  epic  to  relate,  stops  to  gather 
flowers  and  comment  on  facts,  minute  facts  of 
natural  history,  and  later  on  incorporates  the 
flower  and  the  fact  into  the  epic,  which  would  not 
have  been  so  great  without  them.  Listen  to  this 
brief  statement  of  natural  history  and  open  your 
ear  to  the  wonder  and  the  strangeness  that  is 
opened  up  by  it:  "There  is  a  path  that  no  fowl 
knoweth  and  which  the  Vulture's  eye  hath  not 
seen."  The  human  Air-man  in  France  did  not 
miss  many  paths,  looking  from  the  sky  what  won- 
derful opportunities  for  observation;  to  say  that 
he  missed  one  would  seem  to  demand  explana- 
tion. Looking  down  from  above,  through  all  the 
ages  the  birds  have  been  watching  and  acquainting 
themselves  with  the  paths  made  by  terrestrial  crea- 

261 


262     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

tures.  Nevertheless,  there  is  one  that  they  have 
not  known.  Science  has  not  apprehended  the 
sweep  of  the  Vulture's  eye.  Instruments  for 
measurement  have  been  wanting,  baffling  mists  in- 
tervene between  the  bird  in  the  sky  and  the  thing 
that  he  alone  sees  distinctly.  Did  you  ever  care- 
fully scan  the  sky  from  the  deck  of  a  ship  with  a 
good  glass  and  be  unable  to  find  a  glimpse  of  a 
far  off  wing,  and  then  cast  your  bread  upon  the 
water  and  have  white-winged  things  dine  upon  it 
before  you  were  out  of  sight?  The  sight  of  the 
Vulture  is  presumably  first  of  all,  but  there  is  a 
path  that  he  hath  not  seen.  Here  is  the  poetry 
hiding  behind  the  fact,  the  something  unknown, 
the  something  unseen. 

Nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  at  the  Maple- 
wood,  on  Green  Lake,  the  usual  peace  and  quiet 
of  the  place  was  changed  into  the  wildest  commo- 
tion by  the  sudden  disappearance  of  the  only 
daughter  of  the  home,  a  child  of  four  years  of 
age.  It  was  late  April  and  the  lawn  was  green 
and  the  Lake  sparkling  in  the  sunshine,  but  it  was 
capable  of  laughing  on  in  merry  glee  after  swal- 
lowing tender  innocence ;  and  when  she  could  not 
be  found  elsewhere,  a  thousand  hideous  appre- 
hensions all  pointed  to  the  Lake.  These  were 
dispelled  when  the  shepherd  came  over  the  hill 
beckoning  wildly,  the  lost  one  both  figuratively 
and  literally  was  safe  in  the  fold.  There  we 


The  Unknown  Pathway  263 

found  her  perched  on  the  fence,  screaming  with 
delight  over  the  astounding  gambols  of  the  band 
of  young  lambs.  She  was  quite  uncomprehending 
of  any  alarm  on  her  account.  The  cow-yard  was 
between  the  house  and  the  sheep-yards;  she  could 
not  have  crossed  the  first,  with  its  forty  head  of 
cattle;  how  had  she  reached  the  second?  The 
only  statement  made  was  one  to  which  she  stoutly 
adhered:  "The  chickens  showed  me  the  way." 
This  was  an  incident  never  likely  to  be  forgotten, 
especially  by  a  father  who  had  been  led  into 
strange  regions  by  feathered  things. 

What  a  weird  and  wonderful  pathway  it  has 
been,  invisible  except  as  indicated  by  fluttering 
wings,  every  future  step  hedged  about  and  im- 
penetrable, the  past  shining,  sun-kissed,  golden. 
Little  did  the  bare-footed  boy  realize  when  he 
stepped  into  that  first  soft  moist  furrow  that  he 
had  started  on  a  life  journey  over  that  hidden 
pathway  that  no  fowl  knoweth  and  which  the  Vul- 
ture's eye  had  not  seen.  I  saw  a  picture  the  other 
day  of  an  enormous  Spider's  Web  catching  and 
holding  little  creatures  and  letting  the  big  ones 
escape.  What  are  big  and  what  are  little?  Does 
size  indicate  values?  We  need  a  revaluation.  A 
little  peach  is  of  more  value  than  a  big  turnip. 
A  golden  apple  than  a  golden  pumpkin.  A  tiny 
diamond  than  a  great  boulder.  I  am  so  afraid 
that  we  cannot  get  together  on  the  matter  of 


264     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

values.  You  want  to  show  me  your  fat  steers 
and  pigs  and  bursting  granaries  and  long  corn- 
cribs,  and  perhaps  your  bonds  and  mortgages,  for 
which  you  have  exchanged  all  the  days  of  your 
lives,  and  when  it's  too  late  to  be  happy,  you  are 
saying,  "Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods  laid  up  for 
many  days,"  and  before  you  have  finished  the  com- 
placent boast,  mean  old  death  is  knocking  at  the 
door,  to  tell  you  that  the  census  taker  Time  has 
put  you  on  his  list. 

What  shall  a  man  get  for  a  wasted  life,  eye? 
self-blinded  to  flowers  and  waterfalls,  rainbows, 
sunsets,  and  stars;  ears  self-stopped  to  winds  and 
waves,  and  wild  bird  music?  Oh!  brother  mine, 
I  have  not  been  able  to  tell  you  before,  but  for  a 
fact,  I  have  stood  upon  the  golden  hills  of  dawn 
close  by  your  side,  and  while  you  have  prattled 
of  your  vast  wealth  my  heart  has  been  bursting 
with  compassion  over  your  indescribable  poverty, 
only  counterfeit  dollars  that  will  buy  nothing. 
These  fat  fellows  slap  me  on  the  back  and  ask 
with  well-assumed  interest,  if  I  have  to  engage  a 
lawyer  to  make  out  my  income-tax  schedule.  It's 
one  of  the  best  jokes  in  the  world  for  we  both 
enjoy  it  equally.  They  think  I  have  no  income  and 
I  feel  certain  that  if  the  hat  was  passed  around 
in  a  congregation  of  church  mice,  for  their  bene- 
fit, the  offering  should  be  large. 

Let  me  see,  the  unknown  pathway  first  of  all 


The  Unknown  Pathway  265 

led  me  into  a  society  of  aristocrats,  some  blue 
coated,  nearly  all  blue  blooded,  and  each  with 
their  own  tree.  What  a  big  circle  it  was.  If  I 
had  been  the  Bishop  of  their  souls,  I  could  not 
have  made  a  pastoral  call  on  each  one  once  in 
ten  years.  Some,  that  I  knew  first  in  the  chart 
class,  I  later  on  knew  as  fathers  and  mothers, 
grand-fathers  and  grand-mothers,  and  as-  great 
grand-fathers  and  great  grand-mothers,  uncles, 
aunts  and  cousins  without  end. 

Some  birds  that  I  have  known,  had  an  indi- 
vidual acquaintance  with,  would  reach  into  the 
hundreds,  possibly,  up  to  the  thousands,  and  all 
have  been  more  or  less  captivating  friends.  Human 
friends  drop  in  to  dinner  when  there  is  nothing 
to  eat  in  the  house,  come  and  find  you  shaving 
and  instantly  want  to  try  your  razor,  only  to  find 
that  you  don't  know  how  to  strop  a  razor,  and 
yours  should  have  been  junked  years  ago.  Every- 
thing but  your  toothbrush  you  hold  in  common 
with  your  friends;  and  one  may  not  look  in  the 
direction  of  five  and  ten  dollar  loans  for  in  that 
direction  apoplexy  lies.  Boredom  is  one  of  the 
unmitigated  curses  from  which  there  is  no  escape 
in  the  best  society,  unless  that  society  is  composed 
of  birds'  friends. 

There  are  people  whom  we  play  host  to  in  the 
way  that  a  horse  plays  host  to  a  gad-fly  and  some- 
times soul-savers  come  and  want  to  pray,  when 


266     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

all  out  of  doors  is  fairly  bathed  in  the  benedic- 
tion of  "Mighty  God."  The  Bird  Kingdom  is 
free  from  our  conventional  abuses  and  there 
climbers  excite  neither  envy  nor  disgust.  Excus- 
ing considerable  digression,  we  come  back  to  the 
real  unhampered  joy  of  bird  friends  where  rela- 
tions are  cordial  but  never  too  intimate. 

Without  being  too  personal  I  have  been  tell- 
ing you  about  some  of  these  friends  in  earlier  chap- 
ters. I  have  not  really  attempted  to  tell  you  how 
strong  has  been  my  attachment  to  some  of  these 
close  friends,  for  has  not  the  great  poet  of  human- 
ity, Shakespeare,  warned  us  that  "I  would  love 
but  little  if  I  could  tell  how  much." 

Following  along  the  unknown  pathway  not  only 
led  me  to  the  birds  themselves,  but  into  that 
great  department  of  our  literature  that  pertains  to 
birds,  rich,  ample,  and  of  absorbing  interest.  What 
a  surprise  it  was  to  find  the  trails  blazed  from 
an  early  day,  Aristotle  and  Pliny  being  volumin- 
ous writers  on  the  subject  and  a  part  of  it  being 
good  natural  history  today,  the  rest  of  a  charac- 
ter that  even  Herodotus  would  have  chronicled 
as  having  been  a  rumor  over  in  Ethiopia.  For 
years,  we  were  not  occasional  callers  at  the  homes 
of  Frank  M.  Chapman,  Mabel  Osgood  Wright 
and  Neltje  Blanchan,  but  steady  boarders,  and 
according  to  the  customs  of  rural  school  teachers, 
in  an  early  day,  we  boarded  around,  and  Chester 


The  Unknown  Pathway  267 

A.  Reed  was  a  pocket  piece.  "Nature  Study  and 
Life"  by  Clifton  Hodge,  we  fed  to  boys  on  Sat- 
urdays around  camp  fires.  This  same  unknown 
pathway  led  me  to  the  splendid  pioneer  work 
on  the  "Economic  Value  of  Birds"  by  Prof.  F.  H. 
King,  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  unhappily 
immured  in  a  big  volume  on  Geology  and  thus  kept 
out  of  general  use. 

Again  the  unknown  pathway  led  to  John  o' 
Birds  and  John  o'  Mountains,  Burroughs  and 
Muir.  With  John  Burroughs  we  wandered  and 
lost  our  way,  came  back  and  started  in  again  for 
more  little  journeys  in  the  wilderness  of  our  set- 
tled and  cultivated  States.  Going  afield  with 
others,  you  scarcely  get  beyond  the  sound  of  rural 
life,  bleat  of  sheep  and  low  of  kine,  where  Chan- 
ticleer not  only  salutes  the  Dawn,  but  makes  vocal 
the  passing  hour;  but  "John  o'  Birds"  takes  you 
where  Dryads  glide  and  Pipes  of  Pan  are  heard 
where : 

"Long  lights  shake  across  the  Lake 

And  the  wild  cataract  leaps  in  glory." 

With  "John  o'  Mountains"  we  climb  dizzy 
heights,  and  cross  impossible  crevasses,  sharing 
the  wild  rapture  of  "Stickeen"  and  Muir  it  is  that 
shows  us  a  dandelion  and  dear  homey  Cock  Robin 
cuddled  up  close  together  on  his  very  own  glacier. 
My  daughter  and  I  are  agreed  that  no  other 


268     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

water  in  this  world  has  such  a  sparkle  or  can  come 
near  to  quenching  all  thirst  as  that  from  the  Muir 
deep  well  that  his  childish  hands  chiseled  from 
the  rock  at  the  family  home  near  Pardeeville, 
Wisconsin.  And  from  the  same  associations,  a 
Loon  on  "Fountain  Lake"  becomes  one  of  the 
sweet  singers  in  Israel.  What  a  calamity  to  have 
lived  and  have  passed  out  of  life  without  know- 
ing and  feeling  real  kinship  with  two  such  splendid 
unspoiled  men.  Only  yesterday,  I  was  introduced 
to  a  gentleman,  whose  home  is  in  California  and 
whose  income  tax  this  year  will  have  to  be  ex- 
pressed by  at  least  six  numerals.  Wanting  to 
take  his  measure,  I  asked:  "What  do  you  know 
of  John  Muir?"  The  name  was  shrouded  by  a 
certain  mist  and  at  first  I  had  a  feeling  that  he 
was  trying  to  run  it  down  in  "Bradstreet"  so  I 
added,  "He  was  something  of  a  nature-lover." 
Then  the  light  dawned,  "Oh!  yes,  I  know  about 
him,  we  have  a  Prune  named  after  him."  Mr. 
Croesus — you  poor  beggar. 

Long  before  the  war,  long  before  it  had  en- 
tered into  the  heart  of  Woodrow  Wilson,  to  con- 
ceive of  his  magnificent  project  of  a  League  of 
Nations,  William  Butcher  had  conceived  of  a 
magnificent  project  of  a  Nature  League,  uniting 
sportsmen,  plume-wearers  and  all  real  Nature- 
Lovers  in  a  great  Audubon  League,  for  the  pro- 
tection of  our  vanishing  wild  life.  I  would  insti- 


The  Unknown  Pathway  269 

tute  no  comparison  between  Woodrow  Wilson  and 
William  Butcher,  because  in  my  estimation  one 
does  not  stand  a  quarter  of  an  inch  higher  than 
the  other,  and  not  knowing  which  is  the  older,  I 
am  not  prepared  to  say  which  should  stand  god- 
father for  the  other.  Butcher's  League  aims  at 
the  preservation  of  vegetation,  upon  which  life 
depends,  by  saving  the  birds  the  natural  check  on 
insect  hordes,  which  menace  all  growing  things 
and  consequently  life  itself.  Wilson,  by  his 
League,  would  preserve  Justice  and  Freedom  and 
hold  in  check  ignorant  hordes  that  threaten  Civ- 
ilization. These  sages,  seers,  stand  upon  the 
mountain  top  and  whatever  the  surprises  of  the 
future,  the  world  will  not  soon  look  upon  their 
like  again. 

The  unknown  pathway  led  me  into  Audubon 
work.  Some  addresses  made  for  the  Agricultural 
Bepartment  of  the  State  University  led  to  my 
being  selected  as  Secretary  and  Treasurer  of  the 
Wisconsin  Audubon  Society,  which  put  me  on  the 
firing  line  for  bird  protection.  The  work  opened 
out  more  and  more,  and  there  came  into  my  hori- 
zon, such  men  as  J.  Gilbert  Pearson,  the  gifted 
and  efficient  Secretary  of  the  National  Associa- 
tion of  Audubon  Societies,  a  veritable  Pershing 
in  our  army  of  bird  protectors,  and  Br.  Theodore 
S.  Palmer,  of  the  Biological  Survey,  that  astute 
strategist  and  indefatigable  worker,  the  silent 


270     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

partner  in  all  legal  firms  having  anything  to  do 
with  bird  protection,  and  William  Hornaday,  re- 
incarnation of  General  Grant,  the  live  wire  of  the 
National  Museum  of  Natural  History,  whose 
"Vanishing  Wild  Life"  has  done  more  than  all 
other  writings  combined  to  reveal  the  brink  of  the 
pit  over  which  bird  life  trembles.  His  book,  a 
paper  automatic,  has  done  more  to  silence  ma- 
chine guns  in  the  hands  of  sportsmen  than  an- 
other man  might  have  done  with  a  bird  cannon. 
At  a  game  warden  school,  held  in  Madison,  Wis- 
consin, I  know  to  my  certain  knowledge,  that  two 
thirds  of  the  Game  Wardens  joined  the  Audubon 
Society  and  arranged  to  purchase  "Our  Vanishing 
Wild  Life"  as  fixed  ammunition  to  be  carried  in 
their  kits.  The  very  best  letter  ever  written  me 
was  received,  soon  after  that  school,  from  one  of 
the  wardens,  full  of  enthusiasm  and  anxious  to  do 
"something  for  the  little  birds."  The  letter  was 
addressed  to  "The  Birds'  Attorney"  and  signed 
"John  Eagan,  your  Office  Boy." 

The  unknown  pathway  led  to  a  lecture  field  that 
covered  much  of  Wisconsin  and  part  of  Missis- 
sippi, and  articles  on  birds  for  the  public  press  and 
letters  without  end.  Among  bird  workers  in  Wis- 
consin, Prof.  A.  H.  Burrill  and  E.  A.  Cleasby  de- 
serve special  mention.  Wisconsin  bird-lovers  can 
never  pay  the  debt  they  owe  these  splendid  work- 
ers, who  are  both  out  of  the  State  and  whose 


The  Unknown  Pathway  271 

places  it  will  be  difficult  to  fill.  The  Biological 
Survey  in  Washington  got  Cleasby,  and  Burrill 
finally  went  West,  but  not  till  he  had  done  yeo- 
man's service  in  helping  the  writer  in  securing  Bird 
Sanctuaries  aggregating  more  than  sixty-five  thou- 
sand acres,  throughout  the  State.  Generous,  big- 
hearted  Dr.  A.  M.  Benson  must  come  in  for  due 
credit  in  having  donated  a  full  page  in  the  Wis- 
consin Humane  Herald  for  Audubon  work  after 
"By  the  Wayside,"  the  organ  of  the  Society,  had 
died  a  natural  death.  W.  W.  Cook,  formerly  of 
Ripon,  Wisconsin,  and  later  on  of  Washington, 
D.  C.,  aided  by  Prof.  Mitchell,  of  the  Milwau- 
kee Normal  School,  did  valuable  Bird  Work,  in 
which  our  State  had  a  special  interest. 

Among  the  fine  Nature  Books  written  by  Gene 
Stratton-Porter,  her  "Birds  of  the  Bible"  stands 
out  in  my  recollection  as  having  been  especially 
interesting,  for  it  furnishes  evidence  that  an  in- 
structive volume  can  be  written,  not  only  on  birds 
mentioned  in  the  Bible,  but  on  those  mentioned 
in  Shakespeare  and  the  beauty  of  much  poetry 
would  be  utterly  destroyed,  were  we  to  attempt 
to  eliminate  all  references  to  birds.  Poetry  with- 
out its  birds,  would  be  as  silent  and  desolate  as  the 
coming  of  spring  in  the  Northland  without  its  re- 
turning migrants — its  very  life,  melody  and  glad- 
ness. 

Through  more  than  a  half  century  of  reading, 


272     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

the  flutter  of  a  bird's  wing  has  opened  a  window 
for  me  to  the  wide,  wide  sky.  Friends  from  every- 
where have  been  clipping  and  sending  me  notices 
of  birds  appearing  in  the  daily  press,  and  if  old 
Santa  Claus  found  himself  at  my  door  with  no 
bird  book  in  his  pack  for  me,  I  have  a  notion 
that  he  would  feel  that  he  had  overlooked  some- 
thing. Mine  is  a  bird  world  and  I  could  not  live 
in  any  other.  They  are  surely  my  birds  for  am  I 
not  the  "Bird  Man"  and  "The  Birds'  Attorney"? 
A  Telephone  Company  once  offered  me  a  hundred 
dollars  if  I  would  allow  them  to  clean  up  a  hun- 
dred rods  of  trees  and  shrubs  and  vines  and  wild 
roses  growing  along  a  public  road  near  their  poles. 
It  greeted  me  "sair"  to  have  to  assure  its  field 
man  that  I  no  longer  had  title  through  adverse 
possession,  the  birds  in  more  than  twenty  years 
had  gained  that,  and  as  their  legal  representative, 
the  best  I  could  do  would  be  to  act,  if  he  secured 
their  consent  in  writing.  Not  two  minutes  ago  a 
hardened  coquette,  aged  three,  perched  on  a  gate- 
post, called  me,  a  mere  passing  acquaintance,  to 
her  and  whispered,  "I  seem  to  care  more  for  you 
than  for  any  body  else."  Following  the  example 
of  my  youthful  admirer,  I  want,  in  the  strictest 
confidence,  to  whisper  into  the  big  ear  of  the  pub- 
lic: "I  seem  to  care  more  for  some  birds  than 
for  some  people  and  I  don't  care  if  I  do." 

Again  I  feel  the  lure  of  the  pathway  that  no 


The  Unknown  Pathway  273 

fowl  knoweth  and  which  the  Vulture's  eye  hath 
not  seen.  Is  it  not  the  wondrous  pathway  across 
the  sky,  the  unmapped,  uncharted  highway  used 
by  the  unnumbered  billions  of  migrants  that  with 
the  changing  seasons,  spring  and  fall,  have  gone 
back  and  forth,  leaving  no  trace  behind?  I  am 
writing  these  last  words  here  in  Dixie  Land  and 
from  my  window  I  can  see  the  Purple  Martins 
just  demobilized  from  the  advanced  guard  of  mi- 
grants and  the  mighty  urge  is  being  born  again. 
What  matter  if  I  go  ahead  or  follow?  I  am  going 
back  home  with  the  birds,  my  singer,  my  song,  but 
yours  as  much  as  mine,  if  you  will  open  your  heart 
to  the  singer  and  the  song. 

What  means  Alfred  Tennyson  by  saying: 

"Ah !  sad  and  strange  as  in  dark  summer  dawns 

The  earliest  pipe  of  half-awakened  birds 
To  dying  ears,  when  unto  dying  eyes 

The  casement  slowly  grows  a  glimmering 
square." 

A  recognition  of  "The  earliest  pipe  of  the  half 
awakened  birds"  will  banish  the  strangeness  and 
do  much  to  eliminate  the  sadness  and  "While  the 
casement  slowly  grows  a  glimmering  square"  to 
dying  eyes,  dying  ears  may  hear  in  these  pipings, 
the  first  faint  notes  of  the  choir  invisible. 

In  very  fact,  the  bird-lover,  on  the  wings  of 


274     What  Birds  Have  Done  With  Me 

the  birds  he  loves,  is  carried  upward,  where  Alps 
on  Alps  arise  to  far  altitudes,  that  he  never  could 
have  reached  alone. 


14  DAY  USE 

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